Liquor ban back in Bihar after Apex Court stays Patna high court order Amit Shah, Congress go to war on Rahul’s LoC strike comment

The Supreme Court on Friday stayed a Patna high court order that quashed a Bihar government notification banning the sale and consumption of liquor in the state.

The order came on an appeal by the Nitish Kumar government, which said that the high court’s September 30 verdict impeded its efforts to bring about complete prohibition.

Two days after the high court quashed the order, the state government – on Gandhi Jayanti – drew up a new anti-liquor law with harsher provisions for violators. These included placing all adults in a house under arrest in the event of liquor being recovered from its premises.

The apex court is likely to consider whether an individual can claim liquor consumption as his/her fundamental right under the Constitution. Kumar and his government announced prohibition to fulfil an election promise earlier this year to women in a state where alcoholism is a problem in many families. Approximately 16,000 people were booked for flouting the prohibition law since it came into force on

April 5.

The ruling BJP and its main rival accused each other on Friday of playing politics over soldiers’ sacrifice, after Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was “profiteering” from the army’s surgical strike on militant hideouts in Pakistan.

BJP chief Amit Shah led the party’s counter-offensive against Gandhi’s accusation that Modi was doing “khoon ki dalali” or profiteering from the surgical strikes on “terror launch pads” across the Line of Control, the de facto border in Jammu and Kashmir.

The strategic action was carried out after last month’s militant attack on the Uri army base in which 19 soldiers were killed.

“Is the blood of our soldiers something that you can trade?” Shah asked and put the Congress leader’s remarks in the same league as “maut ka saudagar”, an old comment from the party referring to Modi.

The army raids were being touted as revenge for Uri and could become a talking point for next year’s assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur.