India, Oct. 28 -- Among the election promises made by main opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) led by Tejashwi Yadav in Bihar, is one to exempt toddy, a country liquor, from the state's blanket ban on liquor that was imposed in 2016.

"(As the then deputy CM in the Mahagathbandhan government) I had tried hard to convince Nitish Kumar to keep toddy out of the liquor category, as the Pasi community had been extracting toddy from the palm and date trees for generations as their traditional occupation. But the CM did not listen," he said recently at a gathering of the Pasi community (Scheduled Caste or Dalit community) in Patna.

And now it's part of the manifesto.

This comes as a step away from the much-debated liquor ban, though the newe...