Tejashwi blames Nitish Kumar for agony of Pasi community

Leader of the Opposition in the Bihar Assembly Tejashwi Yadav said that the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act has badly affected the Pasi community whose only source of livelihood is toddy-tapping.

Addressing a convention of the community in Patna on Sunday, he said that the RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav had made toddy tax free. His decision had brought prosperity to the Pasi community. But Nitish Kumar imposed a ban on toddy and made the entire community criminal.

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“The Pasi community has suffered the most due to the liquor ban policy of the Bihar government. They have been exploited physically, emotionally, and financially. People of this community have been reduced to the category of criminals,” he noted.

Promising to remove the ban from toddy after the Grand Alliance comes to power, Tejashwi said the Pasi community has been doing this job for several generations. They have no other skills or plot of agricultural land to earn a livelihood.

He said, “According to the Socio-Economic Caste Survey of the year 2017, the number of landless families in the Pasi community of Bihar is still 76 per cent. It is shameful that three-fourth of the Pasi community does not have land for farming. This proves that the government’s claim of development with justice is worthless.”

The RJD leader said despite the population of Scheduled Castes (SCs) in Bihar being more than 21.3 per cent, their participation in governance and professional sectors has been limited to just 1.13 per cent. Only 0.015 per cent of the total population of the Scheduled Castes is of doctors and only 0.1% is that of engineers. “That is why we have declared that on forming the government, we will remove the ban imposed by the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act on toddy, the only source of income for the Pasi community,” he assured.