Bengaluru: The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday dismissed the petitions filed by owners of liquor outlets in and around M.G. Road, Brigade Road and other roads in the city that are close to National Highway-4 and NH-7, seeking directions to the state government to renew their excise licences by declaring that these roads passing through the city's central areas cannot be treated as national highways because of the changed characteristics of these roads.
Dismissing the petitions, the court said, “In view of clear and binding restrictions imposed by the Supreme Court in the case of State of Tamil Nadu Vs K. Balu, this court cannot issue any such direction to the Excise Department of the state to consider the application of the petitioners for renewal of their Excise licences.”
The state had proposed to the central government that de facto bypasses would help bars and restaurants.
The state cited that NH-207 was acting as a bypass for NH-4 and NH-7, while NICE Road was connecting NH-7, NH-4, NH-209, NH-275 and it was a four-laned carriageway which should be considered as bypass on the south-east side of Bengaluru. However, the Union Transport Ministry found this argument wrong. On NICE Road, the ministry said, “This state road is developed on BOT model by the state government and the concession period is up to 2021. It is difficult to consider the same as a bypass to the NH.”
Several owners of bars situated in upmarket areas that are within 500 metres of national highways (inside city limits) had approached the court after their licenses were not renewed by the Excise Department after the Supreme Court earlier this year imposed the restriction.
The state had asked the Union government to denotify 147 isolated stretches of national highways of about 609.65 km. A map of the roads was also submitted by the PWD department to the Centre on August 7, 2017.
But the Union transport ministry said that none of these NH stretches qualified for “deemed denotification” as per their policy. Denotifying these stretches “would tantamount to permitting isolated discontinuities in NH corridors scattered over the NH network within the state. This would not serve the very objective of having NHs”. Based on this, the High Court dismissed the petitions by several bars owners.
