Hyderabad: Bowing to mounted pressure from liquor lobby AP government has changed the licensing system to the bars in the state. In the bar policy state has imposed several conditions to get bar license and also decided to allot the license in the lottery system.
But now it changed as first come first basis. According to sources some of the existing bar owners approach-ed some ministers as they will lose huge in-vestment in the lottery system if they will not get license and asked to renew the licenses for existing bars.
Later the ministers told the Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and briefed about the request of existing bar owners. After acceptance of CM Naidu government has issued new orders on December 18 changing the allotment of license to the bars.
But the government kept that orders in ‘Confidential.’ At present there are 708 standalone bars, 17 Touri-sm bars and 463 star and above hotels. In the new system all the existing bars will get license if they fulfill other conditions.
According to section 9A of the orders issu-ed in 2005 the state go-vernment has to ren-ew the licenses to all the existing bars. But the government in its orders deleted that se-ction and decided to give license on lottery system and now the state has changed this.
The government has decided to give new licenses if they get more applications. The government has decided three slabs for bar licenses taking into consideration the population of 2011 census. The license fee for upto 50,000 population is Rs 25 lakh, for 50,001 to 5 lakh population the fee is Rs 40 lakh and 5 lakh and above population the fee is Rs 50 lakh.
The state has decided to give new licenses if they receive more number of applications. To this effect the state has issued orde-rs on December 21 but this also kept confidential. The officials said by giving new licenses the state is likely to get '380 crore ad-ditional revenue.
The last date for submitting applications is December 31.
