The anti-liquor stir continuing across the State with the women remaining in the vanguard, it has gained further momentum in Haridwar district over the past three days. Kangri and Pathri villages, in particular, saw the agitations with a large number of women venting anger against opening of booze shops in the residential areas of their respective villages.
On Sunday, scores of them gathered while wielding sticks in their hands in Pathri village near the site where a liquor shop is about to be relocated and demanded its shifting away from the residential area. The presence of the local BJP legislator during the stir and unequivocal support to the local demand further enthused the protestors.
They made it clear that under no circumstances would they allow relocation of the liquor shops, made necessary following the Supreme Court order of shifting such shops from the outer edges of national and state highways. “We would oppose tooth and nail any such move because if they are relocated in the villages the youth here would fall a prey to boozing that would affect the collective and domestic peace here,” said a woman found protesting while holding a stick in her tight grip. Echoing the same sentiment, Mahila gram pradhan Sunita Devi said that they would not allow their children to go ashtray through boozing.
Besides, the reports of the women stopping a mobile van from selling liquor at Majra village on Sunday-they come on Sundays to sell liquor to the shops located on the banks of the Nehar Patri Marg. It is learnt that the belligerent women tried to shoo away the mobile van vendor with the batons they were holding. Police rushed to the spot and brought the situation under control.
Speaking to The Pioneer, the BJP legislator from rural Haridwar, Swami Yateeshwaranand said, “The women having decided to lead the movement from the front, it has become a spontaneous mass movement. Our stance is clear. We will not let such a shop open in the heart of the village. Besides, the site where the shop is is located less than 100 metres away from the national highway. I have already spoken to the excise official and told him that we would oppose this move being made by the district authorities.”
Another senior BJP leader Niranjan Singh said, “The district authorities have done wrong measurement and allowed the opening of the shop in a thickly populated area.”
Notably, drunk driving accounting for most of the highway accidents in the country, the Supreme Court had banned the sale and consumption of liquor along the national and state highways, asking for the shops’ relocation to over a distance of 500 metres from the outer edges of the highways or the service lanes and the order had come into force from April 1, 2017.