Nitish fulfils election promise as Bihar bans liquor

In a significant move, the Bihar Government has banned the sale of alcohol, thereby following the footsteps of Gujarat, Nagaland and Mizoram.

"There would be a complete ban on liquor, including the Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) and country liquor. We would be implementing it phase by phase. In the first phase, we would ban the country made liquor and later the foreign liquor would be banned," Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar told the media here today.

Nitish mentioned the decision to ban liquor ban has got tremendous response, especially from the women and youth of the state.

"We had asked the school children to get an oath letter signed from their parents that they would not consume liquor and would ask others to follow the same and astonishingly we got we got one crore 17 lakh oath letters till March 31," he said.

The Bihar Government gets revenue of nearly Rs. 2,000 crores from the sale of IMFL. The state government earned a revenue of around Rs. 4,000 crores from country liquor sales in 2015-16.