Hyderabad: Liquor shops, bars and hotels that are situated within 500 metres of highways are exploring ways to legally circumvent the Supreme Court order banning them from selling liquor.
About 1,117 liquor shops and 394 hotels/ bars currently fall within the 500-metre limit in TS. Around 150 liquor shops, 95 bars and hotels are just 450 to 495 metres from highways. To cover that 50-metre distance, the bar/hotel owners are planning to relocate their entrances, or closing their existing entrances and opening entrances at the rear or from other buildings, and even requesting that road dividers be erected in front of their outlets so that customers will have to take a U-turn to reach them which will increase the distance to over 500 metres!
Relocating the outlets is both impractical and financially unviable for them, say the owners of the outlets.
Telangana state has got an exemption of six months, till September-end, to implement the court’s orders, since the existing licences issued to liquor outlets are valid till September 30.
Some owners are using this reprieve period to visit other states in the country to study what their counterparts are doing to bypass the SC order.
Elsewhere, hundreds of kilometres of national and state highways in states like Maharashtra, Himachal, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and West Bengal have been denotified into local, municipal or district roads.
For example, the West Bengal government issued orders three days ago denotifying state highways passing through cities and towns and reclassifying them as arterial roads. This may save liquor outlets from closure and local owners are hoping the TS government will do the same.
Traders give vastu a miss to stay afloat
Owners are willing to even shed their vastu concerns to make changes that will save them from closing down. “We have invested a lot to run these outlets. We paid a licence fee of up to Rs 1.08 crore each to set up shops. Relocation is not that easy. Moreover, hotels and bars have invested crores in infrastructure, which can’t be relocated just like that. Instead of facing financial losses, we think it is better to alter entrances to save the shops from closure though it may invite vastu problems,” said D. Venkateshwara Rao, president, TS Wine Dealers Association.
Excise officers have no objection to renewing licences if the building alterations bring the outlet in compliance with the 500-metre rule. “Earlier, several shops and bars were permitted to stay open after they changed their entrances from the front to the back to comply with the existing 50-metre distance rule from schools, etc. The same will apply now,” sources said.
