PATNA: Bihar will organise the world’s longest human chain, which will stretch from the state’s northern border touching Nepal to the southern border touching Jharkhand on January 21 to reflect the support the state’s people have for prohibition that came into force eight months ago.
Top officials in the Nitish Kumar-led grand alliance government are currently busy making route plans and disciplinary arrangements for the mega event, which they say would set a world record. Bangladesh currently holds the world record of organising the longest human chain.
“Both leaders and workers of the grand alliance parties and government agencies are working to make this event a grand success. It will be a 7,264-km-long human chain that will touch every nook and corner of Bihar,” said excise minister Abdul Jalil Mastan.
Chief secretary Anjani Kumar Singh, who chaired a special meeting of top bureaucrats and police officials on Monday to discuss preparations for the event, said four major routes had been identified for it and that the human chain will touch most of the gram panchayats of the state.
“National highways and state highways passing through the state would be among the thousands of roads on which the human chain would be formed. Anganwari centre heads, Asha workers, Jeevika Didis, mukhias and sarpanches, teachers and government officials would play a major role in mobilising and motivating people to take part in the human chain,” said a senior official who is part of the ongoing preparations.
The human chain is Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s brain child. During his ‘Nischay Yatra’ tour of the state last month, he had said in Darbhanga that such an event would be organised in January. Kumar, who enacted a prohibition law after amending the existing excise law, has been facing criticism over several stringent penal provisions in the new law.
The Opposition parties, especially BJP, has been asking Kumar’s JD(U)-RJD-Congress coalition government to take back these provisions, calling them “draconian”. But Kumar has been adamant to keep the strict law intact, though he has hinted at making amendments to certain provisions. The winter session of the Assembly, in which the amendments were expected to be tabled and approved, passed last week without any word about them.