Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sushil Modi on Thursday demanded that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar apologise for his behaviour in the Bihar Assembly, saying it was not “graceful”. Kumar former ally and ex-deputy CM of Bihar, Modi claimed that in the past six years, over 1,000 people died due to spurious liquor.
“In past 6 years more than 1,000 people have died in Bihar due to spurious liquor and six lakhs have gone to jail. Is Bihar under police raj? The way Nitish Kumar behaved in assembly isn’t graceful, he should apologise,” Sushil Modi said.
On Wednesday, CM Kumar appeared to lose his cool at BJP MLAs after he was questioned by the Opposition on the Chhapra hooch tragedy. As the death toll in the incident rise to 39, Kumar came increasingly under attack from the Opposition over the ineffectiveness of the liquor ban in the state that Kumar had championed and implemented in 2016.
Fending off the Opposition’s criticism, Kumar defended the law saying it had resulted in people giving up alcohol and that he has given law enforcement agencies a free hand to crack down on trouble-making elements.
Kumar was seen visibly agitated in videos from Wednesday being circulated on social when he was questioned over the deaths in the Chhapra hooch tragedy, and the alcohol ban in the state since 2016.
Meanwhile, BJP MP Nishikant Dubey took a dig at the CM saying that there was no alcohol ban in the state, and was just the “ego” of Nitish Kumar.
“There is no liquor ban in Bihar, it is just Nitish Kumar’s ego. Many in my state are spoilt since they supply liquor to Bihar. As I said earlier, he will go home after 2024 & then Bihar will be free,” Dubey said.
Bihar, where the sale and consumption of liquor is a punishable offence since 2016, has witnessed a spate of deaths related to spurious liquor.
After the tragedy, Kumar on Thursday warned that if people drank liquor, they would die. “Jo piyega woh marega” (those who drink alcohol will die), he said, as he stood his ground maintaining that prohibition was not his “personal wish but a response to the cries of the women of the state”.
Following the attack by the BJP, Bihar deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav said that the agenda of the BJP is only to spread hatred and lies.
“It’s BJP-ruled states that come among top 3-4 states (deaths due to spurious liquor). If you compare Bihar and Gujarat, 50 such deaths were reported in 4 years whereas 21 were in Bihar. The agenda of BJP’s people is to only spread hatred and lies,” Yadav said in Patna, as quoted by ANI.