Bihar to go dry: CM Nitish Kumar announces liquor ban from 1 April next year

Patna: Bihar will go dry from 1 April, 2016, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced on Thursday. The chief minister made the announcement, a part of his election pledge, at an official function to mark Prohibition Day in Patna. He said the poorest of the poor had been consuming liquor, badly hitting their families and their children’s education. [caption id=“attachment_2522454” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Nitish Kumar. PTI[/caption] Increasing liquor consumption was also a major cause for domestic violence, particularly against women, and had contributed to a rise in crimes. “Women are suffering more than anyone else due to increasing liquor consumption,” he said. An official at the chief minister’s office said Nitish Kumar took the decision after a high-level meeting with officials here. In July, Nitish Kumar had declared that prohibition would be imposed if he retained power in the assembly elections. “Since Nitish Kumar had promised a liquor ban during the poll campaign, we are bound to fulfil it. We are working out a new policy to put the ban into effect,” said Excise Minister Abdul Jalil Mastan.  Chief Secretary Anjani Kumar Singh has been instructed to formulate a new liquor policy to implement the ban. Asked how the government would compensate for the huge excise loss, Mastan told The Indian Express: “In a welfare state, the government’s job is to think about the people. There was a growing chorus demanding a liquor ban from women and rural areas. We will look for alternative ways, including ethanol production, to generate revenue.” Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sushil Kumar Modi on Wednesday vowed to support a liquor ban. The decision is expected to derail the government’s financial health. The excise department went into an overdrive in 2007 following a new policy and started issuing licences for marketing liquor across the state. The revenue collection of excise department registered a more than 10-fold jump, from Rs.319 crore in 2005-06 to Rs.3,650 crore in 2014-15.   “Prohibition can work in Bihar just as it has worked in Gujarat. We had made this commitment to people and we are going to fulfill it,” said JD(U) national spokesperson K C Tyagi. “If GST comes into effect, Bihar will generate a good amount of revenue. On the socio-political front, it is true that drinking habits had been affecting the poor in Bihar and we had to find a way to stop it,” said RJD national spokesperson Manoj Jha. IANS