Courts swamped, SC seeks study of Bihar booze ban

Says Officials Hand In Glove With Violators

- AmitAnand Choudhary

New Delhi: As prohibition law in Bihar resulted in lower courts and Patna High Court being flooded with cases pertaining to bail and prosecution under the Act and with two-thirds of judicial time being spent in handling them, the Supreme Court asked the state government to place before it social and legislative impact assessment of the law and also expressed concern that government is not taking preventive measures to stop violation of the law which is being done with complicity of its officials.

A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and M M Sundresh also directed the Nitish Kumar government to collect data on number of prosecutions under the Act and cases pending in different courts including the HC under the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Amendment Act, 2018. The court said that a mechanism should be put in place to deal with the situation which seemed not to have been done by the state.

Referring to the increase in the number of cases in lower courts and HC after the law was passed and which put additional workload on the already overburdened judiciary, the bench said that the governemnt should have thought about the fallout of its policy decision before bringing the law.