The Opposition parties in both Houses of Parliament on Tuesday hit out at the Centre over its alleged attempts to misuse the National Human Rights Commission to investigate the recent hooch deaths in Bihar.

In the Lok Sabha, JDU MP Rajiv Ranjan alias Lalan Singh brought up the issue and asked why the commission didn’t investigate the Morbi bridge collapse in Gujarat that resulted in the death of over 100 people.

“The National Human Rights Commission has informed the Bihar government that it will probe the hooch deaths in Chhapra. How does it (the hooch deaths) become a case of the NHRC?” Singh, who is also the JDU president, said during Zero Hour in the Lok Sabha.

“The way constitutional bodies are being misused, it should not happen.... If the NHRC is probing (the Bihar hooch deaths) then why didn’t it probe the deaths 142 in the Morbi bridge collapse?” Singh said, leading to an uproar from the BJP members who demanded the Centre’s intervention.

BJP’s Patna Sahib MP and former Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad flagged the violation of human rights and claimed that the post-mortem of over 100 people killed in Bihar was not carried out.

“This is a very serious case of violation of human rights. This should be looked into by the NHRC and the children’s commission,” Prasad said, claiming that children were also killed in the incident.

LJP MP Chirag Paswan demanded President’s rule in Bihar and accused the ruling Mahagathbandhan leaders of being hand in glove with those running the illegal liquor trade. He also urged the Centre to take suo motu cognisance of the incident.

“I stand here with the prayer to save Bihar. One after the other people are being killed in my state with hooch,” Chirag said, amid protest by JDU members.

“Through you (the Speaker) I want to urge the central government to take suo motu cognisance and impose President’s rule in the state and also get the CBI to probe the hooch deaths.”

In the evening, the Opposition parties in the Rajya Sabha came up with a joint statement slamming the “double standard” of the Narendra Modi government and alleging that the NHRC seemed to have become the “latest tool in the hands of the Modi government to target political opponents”.

The statement was issued after RJD MP Manoj Jha was not allowed to raise the NHRC probe in the House, leading to a walkout by the Opposition parties.

The statement claimed that hooch deaths worse than Bihar had taken place in BJPruled states such as Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Gujarat but the NHRC never probed them.

It claimed that similar deaths had taken place in Bihar too when the BJP was part of the government but no probe by the NHRC took place during that time.

“The double standard of the Modi government is evidenced by the fact that from 2016, when prohibition was imposed by the Bihar government led by JDU-BJP, to 2021, there have been over 200 hooch-related deaths in the state, but the NHRC never felt the need to investigate such incidents,” the Opposition statement said.

“We condemn the use of the NHRC in such a brazenly partisan and political manner.... It is apparent that the NHRC is being sent only to the non-BJP ruled states as the intent seems to be only to destabilise the Opposition-ruled governments,” the statement added.

“Sadly, the NHRC and NCPCR (National Commission for Protection of Child Rights) appear to have become the latest tools in the hands of the Modi government after using ED, CBI, IT etc to target political opponents since last 8 years,” the statement added. Citing examples of worst hooch deaths in BJP-ruled states, the statement said: “In the year 2021, 782 persons lost their lives by consuming spurious liquor, of which 108 were from Madhya Pradesh alone and 104 were in Karnataka”.