New Delhi [India], March 8: After Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav promised to amend the state’s Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016, by excluding toddy from its ambit, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Ravi Shankar Prasad on Saturday took a dig at him, saying that the RJD leader should “wait till the elections.”
“They should wait till the elections,” Ravi Shankar Prasad told ANI when questioned about Yadav’s promise.
With the Holi festival approaching, BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad also mentioned organizing a large Holi Milan program annually, where people from all sections of society participate. He added that he has invited Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to attend the event.
Tejashwi Yadav, the Leader of Opposition in Bihar, had recently vowed to make changes to the state Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016, if his party came to power. His proposal focused on excluding toddy, a natural beverage produced from palm trees, from the ban. He claimed that toddy tapping is a traditional livelihood for the Pasi (Dalit) community, and the prohibition law had been causing hardship for them.
Yadav revealed that he had held discussions with representatives of the Pasi community, and they had decided to exclude toddy tapping from the ambit of the state’s Prohibition and Excise Act. In a post on X, Yadav stated, “After several rounds of talks with the Pasi community, we announced in a press conference today that once our government is formed, we will exclude the sale of natural beverage ‘toddy’ for the livelihood of the Pasi brothers from the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act-2016.”
Additionally, Yadav blamed the state government for deaths caused by spurious liquor consumption, saying, “According to an estimate, till now more than two thousand people have died due to poisonous liquor or it can be said that the government has murdered them.”
The RJD leader also emphasized that lakhs of people had been jailed due to the prohibition law, claiming that a majority of those jailed were from Dalit and backward communities. He accused the NDA government of harassing poor people through the law, saying that 98-99% of the 12.8 lakh people jailed under the prohibition law belonged to marginalized communities.
“Under the prohibition law, till now about 12 lakh 80 thousand people have been sent to jail, in which 98-99 per cent of people are from Dalit and backward classes. Under the guise of this law, poor people have been harassed a lot by the NDA government,” Tejashwi Yadav’s post read.
Yadav further criticized the Prohibition law, citing a court’s observation that the Act had “deviated from its purpose.”
In response, Bihar Minister Shrawon Kumar criticized Tejashwi Yadav’s promise and pointed out that the state government had imposed a ban on toddy when the liquor ban was enforced. He also added that the Bihar government had supported families involved in toddy production through its Satat Jeevikoparjan Yojana, which helped integrate toddy production into the mainstream economy.
Assembly elections in Bihar are expected to take place in October this year, though the Election Commission has not yet announced the dates for the polls.