Andhra Pradesh may not back retail liquor outlets

The top brass of excise department including its commissioner, director and even the minister Kollu Ravindra are visiting Kerala at present to study the excise policy being adopted by it.

Earlier, the team visited Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and took stock of the excise policy being adopted by the respective governments. Excise sources privy to the ongoing developme-nts in the department maintain that there is no enough time with the go-vernment to go for the earlier proposal of setti-ng up liquor retail outlets on its own and run the business by hiring the staff on temporary basis.

As over 4,000 liquor retail outlets are existing at present, it is a Herculean task with the government to set up such a large number of outlets in a short period. Instead, it may select a district and set up government run liquor retail outlets as a pilot project claiming that based on its success, they will expand the same experiment in other districts too.

The government may adopt another system which is in practice in Karnataka at present wherein, it will set up government run retail outlets to the extent of 15% to 20% out of the total requirement and allow the remaining outlets to be run by the private agencies.

It may also renew the existing policy by affecting certain changes like closure of liquor outlets located along the National Highways by about 50 or 100 meters distance to bring down the number of road accidents due to drunken driving and award the license to the private agencies through a draw of lot as was the practice last year.

The government is already carrying out liquor retail business as many outlets went un-allotted despite issue of a series of notifications to allot them through a draw of lot last year.

It is also carrying out wholesale business by setting up one or two liquor depots in a district as AP Beverages Corporation Limited turned defunct. The state government earns about Rs 80 crore in the form of application fee when five to seven persons or agencies file application forms for allotment of each retail outlet out of over 4,000 outlets existing in the state.

A senior excise official said, “We are expecting a comprehensive new excise policy to be announced by the government keeping in mind the policy of our neighbouring state of Telangana to avoid pilferage of IML, cheap liquor and even ID liquor along porous border into Andhra Pradesh.”