Patna, Nov. 12: The excise department has received 1,122 suggestions from the people on the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016, till 6pm today - the deadline for the process.

Suggestions came through email, post and text messages since the excise department sought suggestions on the dry law, criticised as draconian and Talibani, on November 1. Excise commissioner Aditya Kumar Das did not share the "tips" the government got, but The Telegraph spoke to two residents who sent in their suggestions.

One was Patna High Court advocate Ravi Kumar Singh, and the other, industrialist Satyajit Kumar.

Ravi congratulated chief minister Nitish Kumar for implementing prohibition but criticised its provisions, saying that police can misuse the act. He insisted that the provision for 10 years' to life imprisonment for consuming alcohol or contraband was harsh. He suggested bringing down the term to two years, and also abolishing the provision of holding guilty family members above the age of 18 if the dry law is violated at home. He termed this provision illegal.

The advocate is one of the 50 people who will attend a meeting with Nitish on November 14 at Samvad on the ideas received.

Satyajit, president, PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has suggested the department to reintroduce the sale and marketing of liquor in Bihar.

"I am a teetotaller but I strongly believe that social problems cannot be solved legally and at the cost of damaging the state, both economically and by creating social tension," he said. "Bihar is the land of Gautam Buddha who told us to follow the middle path and never asked people to adhere to the extreme path. In this modern world there is no place for the theory of divine origin of the state where the king was supposed to derive his authority directly from God."

"I request the government to adhere to the middle path and reintroduce sale and marketing of liquor in Bihar because manufacturing is already going on with more incentives recently announced by the government," he added. "The government can phase out liquor slowly in the next 10 years without compromising on the state's development issues."

Excise commissioner Das said: "On the last date for sending suggestions on the prohibition law, we have received 1,122 suggestions. Of them, 518 have come through email, 562 through post and 42 through SMS."

"Some people have given suggestions against prohibition and some have supported it, I cannot tell you about any specific suggestion," he said, refusing to share the specifics.