More than five crore people came out of their homes in Bihar on Sunday and formed an unbroken "maanav shrinkhla" (human chain), claimed to be over 18,000 kilometres long, responding to the call of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to support his government's efforts towards environment conservation and eradication of social evils.
The human chain bettered previous records of 2017, when people had stood in support of Kumar's move to impose a complete ban on sale and consumption of alcohol, and of 2018 when the exercise was repeated to back campaigns against dowry and child marriage, a top state government official said.
"Altogether 5.17 crore people took part in the human chain which was 18,034 kilometres long. The length this year was much longer than 14,000 kilometres of 2018 and 11,000 kilometres of the year before when Bihar first entered record books beating Bangladesh," Chief Secretary Deepak Kumar told reporters here.
He said, "A total of seven helicopters had been pressed into service for capturing aerial images of the event that was bound to go down in the annals of history as a record. Besides, more than 100 drone cameras have clicked photographs which showed the enthusiasm of the state's people, for which we are thankful".
The human chain began at around 11.30 AM and people stood for about 30 minutes, holding hands, with the chief minister himself leading from the front at the historic Gandhi Maidan in the state capital.
A host of dignitaries, including Magsaysay Award-winning environmentalist Rajendra Singh and United Nations Environment Programme's country head for India Atul Bagai attended the event at Gandhi Maidan where several dignitaries including members of Parliament, state cabinet and state legislature were also present.
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In his thanksgiving speech that followed the 30- minute-long exercise, the chief minister who like other attendees wore a white cap thanked Singh and Bagai for extending their support to the endeavour.
Rajendra Singh, while responding to queries from journalists, lavished praise on the Bihar chief minister for the "Jal-Jeevan-Hariyali" campaign and said, "If India can dream of becoming Vishwa Guru, one of the reasons is our age- old tradition of respecting nature. No praise is too high for Nitish Kumar's thrust on environment conservation".
The mammoth event threw up many stellar examples of public participation. In Bochaha block of Muzaffarpur district, villagers stood atop a make-shift bridge of boats on the 200 meters wide bed of river Gandak.
In Begusarai's Balia sub-division, bereaved family members and neighbours of Om Prakash Agarwal deceased elder brother of a well-known doctor in the area stood holding hands in front of the funeral pyre after it was lit.
The celebratory mood was, however, also marked by the death of a man in Darbhanga district and a woman in Samastipur.
"Both died of heart attack," the chief secretary said.
The success of the human chain also exposed chinks in the opposition Grand Alliance, which had chosen to stay away from the event.
RJD MLAs Faraz Fatami, Maheshwar Yadav and Prema Devi and MLC Sanjay Prasad, besides Congress MLA Munna Tiwari took part in the exercise much to the chagrin of their parties.
Fatami said, "I am supporting the cause and not taking a political stand. I do not think my move harms the party in any way. I would have, however, liked the RJD to rise above politics and support this human chain. It's not about politics."
"I know the party is thinking of humiliating me, in the name of discipline, like it humiliated my father. I wish to ask if discipline is so important in the RJD, why no action was taken against Tej Pratap Yadav (party supremo Lalu Prasads elder son) who caused many of our candidates to lose in Lok Sabha polls," Fatami said.
His father Mohd Ashraf Fatami has ended his long association with the RJD and joined the JD(U) headed by the chief minister.
Opposition leaders like Tejashwi Yadav and former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi alleged that people from all walks of life, including small children, were forced to take part in the human chain, which was a "colossal wastage of government resources".
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