Patna: Bihar has completed a decade of prohibition. It was on April 1, 2016 that the then chief minister Nitish Kumar-led government banned country liquor in the state, but after seeing the initial euphoria and overwhelming support to the move by women, decided to completely ban the manufacturing, sale, purchase, storage, transport and consumption of all types of alcoholic drinks from April 5, 2016.
With this Bihar became the only one among the bigger states in the country to implement total prohibition. Liquor is banned in Gujarat also, but foreign nationals, GIFT City (Gujarat International Finance Tec-City) employees and official visitors, and people holding health permits allowing them to drink due to medical reasons, are exempted. The Northeastern states – Mizoram and Nagaland – have also implemented prohibition. Several other big and small states like Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Manipur have imposed partial ban on liquor.
Prohibition laws
The Bihar government followed up the liquor ban by bringing the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016, which came into effect on Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary on October 2, the same year. It banned all intoxicants and alcohol across the state.
It was criticised as ‘draconian’ by independent agencies, intellectuals, and also by the Patna High Court due to the sweeping powers given to the police and excise officials, provisions for searches without warrants, collective punishment to entire families, offices, establishments and villages; non-bailable offences, minimum 10 years of imprisonment, and heavy fines and penalties that were considered arbitrary, violative of fundamental rights and principles of justice.
The government addressed the criticism by bringing the Bihar Prohibition and Excise (Amendment) Act, 2018. It deleted five sections pertaining to penalty for committing fraud, penalty for the knowledge of possession of intoxicant, enhanced punishment after previous conviction, collective fine, and externment of notorious or habitual offenders.
The amendment also did away with mandatory imprisonment for first time offence of consumption of liquor, and substituted it with a fine of Rs 50,000 or three months of simple imprisonment.
However, the criticism of the law continued, jails became overcrowded and the courts were flooded by minor cases pertaining to the flouting of prohibition. The government brought the Bihar Prohibition and Excise (Amendment) Act, 2022, under which the fine for people caught first time for consuming alcohol was reduced to Rs 2,000 – Rs 5,000. The executive magistrates were authorised to determine the exact amount of the fine to be paid. The second time or repeat offenders faced one-year jail term. There have been numerous minor tweaks in the law, as well as, the rules over the years.
The enforcement and success
Around 11.38 lakh cases pertaining to the violation of the liquor law have been lodged across Bihar over the past 10 years and led to the arrest of 17.18 lakh people. Of these 5.61 lakh cases were registered and 7.76 lakh people were arrested by the prohibition and excise department, while 5.77 lakh cases were registered and 9.42 lakh people were arrested by the police.
“The enforcement agencies seized more than 4.83 crore litres of alcoholic drinks, including 2.40 crore litres of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) and 2.43 crore litres of country liquor in the past decade. They also destroyed 98 per cent or 4.73 crore litres of the total seized liquor,” said Bihar prohibition, excise and registration minister – cum – deputy chief minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav.
The state government has also taken the help of sniffer dogs and vehicle and cargo inspection system, which uses X-ray scanners. Altogether 42 drones are also being used to detect prohibition violations.
A call centre set-up by the prohibition and excise department has been receiving around 300 to 400 calls daily from people eager to inform about flouting of the liquor ban.
The drinking in the open, drunkards flooding the streets around liquor shops, and public nuisance has subsided. There have been various surveys by government and independent agencies about the improvement in the standard of living of the poor families.
Social activist and former professor of economics at the Patna University, NK Chaudhary told ETV Bharat: “Revenue loss has happened, but the social benefit has been huge. And we must not forget that the ultimate aim of governance in a democracy along with the concept of the welfare state, is the well-being of the people. Even if the ideal situation does not prevail, in my opinion prohibition should continue.”
The failures
The FIRs registered by the enforcement agencies mandatorily went to the courts and clogged them. The situation became such that at one point of time 15 judges of the Patna high court were engaged in cases pertaining to flouting the liquor ban.
The situation became such that the then Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana (2021-22) and other justices repeatedly criticised the Bihar prohibition law for its “lack of foresight” that clogged the Patna High Court.
As prohibition progressed, numerous hooch tragedies big and small also occurred. The main culprits were the moonshiners who concocted illicit brew with methyl alcohol instead of ethyl alcohol, causing blindness, organ damage, and deaths.
According to the state government statistics, 360 people succumbed in hooch tragedies. However, unofficial sources peg the number at several times more.
Meanwhile, as the government-controlled liquor distribution system shut down with the onset of prohibition, a well-oiled liquor mafia operating in nexus with politicians and enforcement agencies took its place. It has become deeply entrenched in the society, and flush with illicit money, has started calling the shots in local politics (panchayati raj institutions).
“Firstly, the history is not on the side of Bihar. Prohibition has not succeeded anywhere in the world, be it the US where it led to the rise of mobsters like Al Capone or various states in India. The moment you ban anything, you open the doors for illicit trade in it. Secondly, Bihar shares a completely porous border with Nepal, West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh. It is next to impossible to man the entire border to check smuggling,” a senior Bihar Police officer told ETV Bharat.
“With the mafia taking control of liquor smuggling, it has become into a well-organised crime. Of course, liquor coming from other states is seized at different places in Bihar, but it is just the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the smuggled consignment is smoothly distributed. They are running a parallel economy,” the senior police officer shared.
Financially, while implementing the ban in 2016, Nitish had said that the state government was taking a revenue loss of Rs 5,000 crore per annum to ensure fewer road accidents, lesser domestic violence, and better health and standard of living for the people, especially the poor.
However, the cascading effect of the revenue loss was much larger as shops, bars and restaurants serving liquor shutdown. A large number of people working in them lost their jobs, while snacks-sellers around the liquor shops lost their businesses.
According to current estimates by finance department officials, the state at present is undergoing a loss of revenue of around Rs 50,000 crore, factoring in the usual increment in excise earnings, as well as, the suspected widespread use of alcohol.
Alcohol controversies
In May 2017, over a year after the implementation of prohibition in the state, it was noticed that a large number of liquor bottles were missing from the ‘malkhanas’ (police storeroom where seized evidence, property and valuables are kept) of the police stations in Patna district. Senior Bihar Police officials said that rats consumed several lakh litres of the confiscated alcohol. A probe was ordered, but nothing substantial came out of it.
But the rodents had become so addicted to the intoxicating drinks that the probe did not deter them and several such cases came to light in other districts, including Kaimur where they guzzled around 11,000 litres of liquor in 2018.
Several incidents of cops turning bootleggers also surfaced in the dry state. In some of them, the police officials used the police station premises to sell or dispose of liquor.
The then Gopalganj superintendent of police (SP) Rashid Zaman had arrested Baikunthpur station house officer (SHO) Lal Narayan Mahto and assistant sub-inspector Sudhir Kumar for trading liquor worth Rs 40 lakh from the police station premises.
Similarly, an excise department team raided the Sarai police station in Vaishali district and nabbed three police officials, including SHO Vidur Kumar selling around 900 litres of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) worth Rs 15 lakh from the police station premises in September 2023. They were later dismissed from service.
In another such case, Bela police station (Muzaffarpur district) SHO Ranjana Verma was suspended in March 2025 after a large consignment of seized liquor went missing from the police station premises.
The future of liquor ban
As Nitish quit the chief minister’s post and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Samrat Choudhary took his place on April 15, speculations about prohibition being ended or tweaked gained currency. However, the new government made it clear that the liquor ban will stay and efforts would be undertaken to implement it in a better manner.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former chief minister Nitish Kumar are in full support of prohibition in Bihar. In fact, Modi ji had asserted at a programme in Patna that prohibition was the best decision of Nitish’s tenure as the chief minister. We intend to crack down hard on illicit liquor trade, especially that of spurious liquor, which has caused several hooch tragedies in the recent years,” Samrat said.
Deputy chief minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary, while speaking during the debate on the trust vote sought by the new National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in the legislative Assembly, also iterated that prohibition would stay.
“All parties came together to support the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016 brought by our leader Nitish Kumar ji. How can the ban on liquor could be said to be a failure if those who flout it are nabbed and punished? Everybody become hellbent on proving that prohibition is a failure if there is any suspicious death anywhere. We have promised the state and the country that there would be no liquor or alcohol consumption apart from medicinal use. The law is present and will continue in future,” Vijay said. He also thanked the new chief minister for asserting that prohibition will continue.
