Nagaland Baptist Church Council (NBCC) has objected to the State government’s decision to make alcohol available for G20 guests and instead urged the government to implement the Nagaland Liquor Total Prohibition (NLTP) Act with proper will power and resoluteness. In a statement, NBCC general secretary Rev Dr Zelhou Keyho alleged that the Act had been in the cold storage for three decades and had never been systematically implemented.
He said the Act had been defined as a failure even before its implementation because there was a lack of will power coupled with half-hearted approach of the government.
He pointed out that even though the Act stated “Total Prohibition”, it actually was not as there were provisions that regulated use in different categories. He said the provisions permitted the government and individuals to use alcohol.
He mentioned that since the Act was not systematically enforced and the people were not educated, the latter were often misled. He said this lackadaisical attitude led some to gain in an unfair means and cited spurious liquor, black market and bootlegging as some clear examples of the outcome. Therefore, according to him, the problem is not the prohibition but lack of will power and determination in implementing NLTP.
When the Act was not implemented, Keyho stated that every legal provision became a suspect, and making liquor available during the G-20 event was one such example. He feared misuse of the provision because there would certainly be no supervision and warned that there was every chance that the star hotels and restaurants would become den for liquor.
He said Nagaland had a long history of bringing NLTP Act. The movement began in the early 1960s and the church and civil society fought for almost three decades, before NLTP came into being in 1989.
He recalled that in the 70s and the 80s, NBCC and Naga Mothers’ Association spearheaded the movement, supported by civil society organisations (CSOs). He said CSOs did this because they saw the evil of liquor in the society and what it had done to the generation then.
