Liquor ban: Karnataka wrote to union ministry about highway denotification

Bengaluru: While the Supreme Court on Tuesday marginally diluted its ban on liquor vends being situated within 500 meters of national and state highways, passing an order allowing states to denotify highways passing through municipal limits in a bid to allow some liquor vendors to carry on, Bengaluru still waits for the promised denotification. 

There is no clarity whatsoever on whether the sale of liquor at popular pubs, clubs, lounge and resto bars on the four national highways that pass through Bengaluru City will benefit, said a top official.

The officer said that the apex court has "not diluted" its earlier order, which had restricted sale of liquor within 500 metres of all highways.  

“Our understanding (of the Tuesday ruling) is that while the state governments can denotify the state highways there is no clarity on whether they can ask the Centre to denotify the national highways to allow liquor sale in the prohibited zone. 

A fortnight ago the Karnataka government wrote to the Roads & Transport Ministry to denotify the national highways that pass through the City. We are awaiting the reply from the Centre. We cannot renew the licences of the Excise licencees, who have their retail outlets in the 'prohibited' zone until we get a reply from the Government of India," said the officer.

He said that several retail outlets have applied for relocation of vends to protect their businesses from shutting down. "We have renewed licences of only those outlets, which are not affected by the Supreme Court order," he added.

  The liquor retailers meanwhile said their mounting losses now run into hundreds of crores since they turned off the taps on June 30 in compliance with the apex court ban.

Roughly 800 odd liquor retailers including 19 star hotels in Bengaluru have gone dry since July 1. "We are hopeful after the Supreme Court's ruling on Tuesday that the government may get the highways denotified but we are caught up in a bureaucratic tangle in Karnataka. We do not know when we will be allowed to resume business as no one in the government is giving us any assurance," said head of the Bengaluru chapter of the National Restaurant  Association of India (NRAI) Manu Chandra.

Chandra added that the affected liquor vendors have met several bureaucrats and ministers including CM Siddaramaiah and Minister for Bengaluru Development & Town Planning K.J. George but there is no clarity on when they would get a green signal to resume business. "Our staff is at risk of losing their jobs because of no business. We are putting pressure on the state government to rescue the beleaguered liquor industry, which has suffered huge losses post demonetization. Cash sales have never been so bad," said another prominent resto-bar owner.