Officer arrested for breaking prohibition law in Bihar
Patna, July 7: A sales tax deputy commissioner was arrested in Bihar's Siwan district for consuming liquor in violation of prohibition law, police on Saturday said.
Deputy Commissioner Abhay Pandey, posted in Roorkee, Uttarakhand, was taken into custody late on Friday after two bottles of liquor were also recovered from his vehicle.
Pandey was arrested from Ghutni check post near the Uttar Pradesh border, said Siwan Superintendent of Police Navin Chandra Jha.
Pandey, who belongs to Deoria, Uttar Pradesh, was on the way to Siwan to attend a marriage, Jha said.
Total prohibition was imposed in Bihar on April 5, 2016. So far over 1.5 lakh people have been arrested for violation of prohibition law, including sons of two BJP lawmakers in two separate incidents in July and April.
The BJP and Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United are allies in Bihar.
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Confident we are going to win Kerala: Shashi Tharoor
New Delhi (PTI): Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday expressed confidence in the victory of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala, saying the Congress-led alliance will win more than 75 seats out of the total 140 in the state.
Tharoor, who hails from Kerala, said he was not surprised to see the results of the exit polls, most of which predicted a victory for the UDF that has been out of power for 10 years in the state.
"We have been on the ground. I have campaigned in 59 constituencies across 12 districts out of 14. I was very confident we are going to win.
"Everything that I have picked up from not just my party colleagues and workers but also from other observers, media and others have always convinced me that we were going to score a comfortable win of above 75 seats. And all the (exit) polls have confirmed the same thing," he told reporters here.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP said he was not surprised to see the results of the exit polls but in general he was not a big fan of exit polls in India.
"Because ours is not purely a homogenous society. We have to take into account gender issue, caste issue, class issue, regional disparities. You never get a convincingly large enough sample to give an accurate poll and now there is the additional complication that we have heard about in West Bengal this year that many people are unwilling to answer the questions of the pollsters," he said.
The Congress leader said normally, it used to be below 10 per cent that people said that they would not answer.
"Even if you are a reputable exit pollster, in Bengal, one polling company has said 60 per cent of people refused to answer. So, what is the worth of a poll where 60 per cent of your respondents have not answered," he said.
Several exit polls on Wednesday predicted a comeback by the Congress-led UDF in Kerala after 10 years, dethroning the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF).
Polling for the 140-member Kerala assembly was held on April 9. Results of assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Puducherry, besides Kerala, will be announced on May 4.
