Patna: Authorities have disconnected power lines and stopped the supply of water to a village in Bihar after villagers ignored the government’s appeal for them to construct toilets at each home, reports say.
Authorities want to declare the village “open defecation-free” by the end of this month.
The village served this bizarre punishment is Mehsar, tucked away in the Sadar block of Sheikhpura district, around 100km east of Patna.
The punishment has left villagers without power and water since Saturday.
The village is home to 300 families.
“Power supply has been stopped at our village since Saturday as the officials want us to construct toilets at home at all cost by March 31. We have been living in complete darkness,” local villager Sanjeet Kumar told the local media on Tuesday.
Local leaders have condemned this act of the administration adding instead of victimisation, the villagers should have been encouraged to build toilets at homes by informing them about the advantages of cleanliness.
“This is dictatorial act of the administration. The power supply at the village has stopped to punish the villagers who didn’t take its advice seriously,” said a local district council vice-chairman Ranjeet Kumar.
Authorities said they had not stopped power supply but only denied the villagers the benefits of public distribution system and rationed food for not cooperating with the government in achieving the cleanliness tasks.
“We can’t say about the power cuts but we have indeed denied the villagers the facilities of public distribution system since they were not taking interests in the cleanliness drive,” a local government official Sunil Kumar Chand told the local media.
According to an official report, around 16.5 million households out of over 110 million populations in Bihar currently do not have toilets in their homes as they are forced to defecate in the open.
The state government claims so far 308 villages out of 44,000 have been declared free from open defecation and the rest will have this distinction in the next few months.
