: The Bihar Chief Secretary (CS) and the Director-General of Police (DGP) on Friday assured the Patna High Court that participation of school students in the proposed human chain on Saturday will not be mandatory.
Traffic on the highways during the event would be regulated, with all emergency services positioned at strategic places.
Creating awareness
The Bihar government is to organise the human chain, billed as the world’s longest, from 12.15 p.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday to create awareness on prohibition.
Appearing before a Division Bench of the Patna High Court, comprising Acting Chief Justice Hemant Gupta and Justice Sudhir Singh, CS Anjani Kumar Singh and DGP P.K. Thakur said participation of school students or anyone else in the human chain would be voluntary. No action would be taken against any student or teacher for not being part of it. They also said that traffic movement on both the State and the national highways would be regulated during the event, with all emergency services like ambulances and fire tenders positioned there. The court fixed January 28 as the next date of hearing.
On Thursday, expressing displeasure, the court had issued summons to the top officials to make the government’s stand clear, amid reports that students and teachers were being pressured to ensure participation in the human chain.
A forum for Public Interest Litigation filed the petition before the court. Counsel for the petitioner, Shashi Bhushan Kumar, had even referred to a newspaper report, which said that a coercive order had been issued by an education officer that students not participating in the human chain would be deprived of benefits provided by the State government.
Responding to it, the Principal Additional Advocate General Lalit Kishore said that the government would look into the matter and suitable action would be taken in case of any wrongdoing. Further, the court did not impose any ban on the proposed human chain to be formed on January 21.
The State Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will participate in the human chain at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan.
“It will be an unprecedented, historic event, in which over two crore people will join their hands, spreading over 11,000 km all across the State,” Mr. Kumar said in Bhagalpur, during his ongoing Nishchay Yatra on Friday.
The State government had, on April 5 last year, enforced total prohibition in the state after promulgating a new Bihar State Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016, and since then, over 20,000 people have been arrested and over three lakh litres of liquor seized for violating the stringent liquor laws.
