Context:

Bihar government has been undertaking various measures to monitor illegal liquor manufacturing in the state. Some of these measures include:

=> Usage of drones.

=> Appointment of judicial officers as presiding officers in the State’s 74 special courts to hear cases involving the violation of prohibition laws.

=> Prohibition and Registration Department, over 3.5 lakh people have been arrested under the law since April 2016. Hundreds of policemen and other officials too have either been suspended or are facing a departmental inquiry.

What are the main grounds raised against prohibition of liquor and in favour of prohibition?

1. The right of privacy is violated, which was given voice by the Supreme Court in 2017 in Puttaswamy judgment. The Right is associated with the citizens’ right to eat and drink as per their choice.

2. Ground of manifest arbitrariness: The law grants health permits and temporary permits to out-of-state tourists. The petition says there are no intelligible differences in the classes thus being created by the state on who gets to drink and who does not and violates the Right to Equality under Article 14 of the Constitution.

The following arguments indicate that such ban is the need of the hour:

=> The Constitution places a responsibility on all state governments to “at least contain, if not curtail, consumption of alcohol” (Article 47).

=> Strict state regulation is imperative to discourage regular and excessive consumption of alcohol.

=> Alcohol denudes family resources and reserves and leaves women and children as its most vulnerable victims. A social stigma at least as far as the family unit is concerned is still attached to the consumption of alcohol.

=> Vulnerable persons, either because of age or proclivity towards intoxication or as a feature of peer pressure, more often than not, succumb to this temptation.

Prohibition in Other States:

Alcohol prohibition is in force in the states of Gujarat, Mizoram, Nagaland and the union territory of Lakshadweep.

Related Constitutional Provisions:

=> State Subject: Alcohol is a subject in the State list under the seventh schedule of the Indian Constitution.

=> Article 47: The Directive Principle in the Constitution of India states that “The state shall undertake rules to bring about prohibition of the consumption except for medicinal purposes of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are injurious to health”.