Bihar prohibition: For 4th time, police vow to ensure successful prohibition in state

Police have been in the firing line over the easy accessibility of liquor in the state, which enforced prohibition in April 2016. This was the fourth pledge taken by the policemen to make prohibition a success, as the previous oaths did not yield the desired results.

More than 80,000 Bihar Police members, along with thousands of others across the state, on Friday took a vow against the sale and consumption of alcohol and ensure successful prohibition in the state.

Bihar police officers take oath during 'Nasha Mukti Diwas' at Sardar Patel Bhawan in Patna on Friday. (Santosh Kumar/Ht Photo)

Police have been in the firing line over the easy accessibility of liquor in the state, which enforced prohibition in April 2016. This was the fourth pledge taken by the policemen to make prohibition a success, as the previous oaths did not yield the desired results.

Around 11 am on Friday, policemen gathered across the state to take the oath, some at their police stations and others on big open grounds. In Patna, Bihar’s police chief SK Singhal administered the oath to several policemen.

“I do solemnly swear I will never consume liquor in my lifetime. I shall be liable for stern action if I am ever found involved in any activity involving liquor,” read the oath.

Earlier, on December 21, 2020, and April 4, 2016, all police personnel, including home guards, had taken a similar pledge. In 2019 also, the exercise was repeated on the CM’s directive.

“Such oath has no legal sanctity. It is strange how the entire officialdom gets down to such meaningless exercise to appear holier than the king. Removing or suspending anyone is purely an administrative decision. In matters of the Excise Act, the courts have also been rightly liberal in granting bail,” said former assistant solicitor general NA Shamshi.

Another lawyer Sashikant Yadav said that there was no performance of oath under the India Oath Act 1873 & 1969 (section-3). “There is a defined process for administering an oath. More importantly, if there is no respect for the oath, it becomes a futile exercise,” he said.

Former DGP Abhayanand asked what would happen with those policemen, who were on leave today and could not take the oath, if they were caught consuming liquor. “Will they not be dismissed from service? If there is no fear of law, what will an oath do? This oath is being taken in the name of what, the Constitution, law, morality? There are provisions of punishment in the Indian Penal Code (IPC),” he added.

Bihar police association’s former general secretary KK Jha said that administering oath repeatedly reflects a lack of trust and governance failure. “There is no such provision in the Police Act. The police manual deboned the roles and responsibilities of the police as per the Act.

Though the government organises the oath against liquor almost every year, the recent hooch deaths and subsequent police overdrive to nab youth consuming liquor and catch truckloads of smuggled liquor exposed the truth of prohibition, providing the opposition ammunition to attack the government. The main reason attributed to the easy flow of liquor was the police-mafia nexus. Ever since the state went dry in 2016, several lakh litres of illicit liquor have been seized while 850 policemen, found either drunk or hand-in-glove with the liquor traders, have been suspended,” said KK Jha.

“Of them, 206 policemen were dismissed from service after the prohibition law was amended and made quite stringent,” said a senior official in the state home department. The CM has now made the SHO of each police station accountable for any illegal sale or consumption of liquor, said the official.

From January 2021 and October 2021, the Bihar police seized 38.72 lakh litres of illicit liquor while 62,140 persons, including 1590 outsiders, were arrested and 12,200 vehicles seized.