Nitish Kumar started with country liquor ban from 1 April 2016 and then advanced to total prohibition
Prohibition has been
close to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's heart and he is often seen to be on an overdrive to implement the ban on alcohol introduced 23 months ago.
So are the
police and excise department officials in Bihar.
According to statistics presented by the government in the state legislative council on Thursday, one person is arrested and sent to jail every 10 minutes in Bihar for flouting the ban on sale and consumption of liquor. That is an average of 172 arrests daily.
The government told the legislative council that more than 1.21 lakh people had been arrested in the state since April 2016 when the Nitish Kumar government
made it a crime for people to consume alcohol.
Also, the council was informed, the authorities had seized over 2 million litres of liquor in about 6.5 lakh raids conducted between 1 April 2016 and 6 March 2018.
Mr Kumar had started out with a ban on country liquor from 1 April 2016 and a plan to completely ban consumption of the better-quality alcohol six months later.
But he was so happy with the response to the ban on country liquor that he advanced total prohibition by six months.
It was a key promise he made to women voters who were seen to have played an important role in his winning a third term in November 2015, then part of a grand alliance with Lalu Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress.
Lalu Yadav's son Tejashwi Yadav, who became his bitter critic after Mr Kumar dumped the RJD-Congress combine to ally with the BJP last year, had renewed his attacks on the government after a vehicle ran over nine children in Muzaffarpur.
"Prohibition in Bihar is a farce and the ghastly incident of Muzaffarpur, where a drunk BJP leader crushed nine children to death and left more than 20 others injured, proves our point," Tejashwi Yadav had alleged.