Highway liquor outlets may raise toast, if govt relaxes relocation rules

After the Supreme Court’s (SC) ban on liquor vends on the periphery of national and state highways, the Maharashtra government may relax rules to allow shifting of affected retail outlets to alternate locations.

The SC order has said that any shop, restaurant, 3-star, 4-star or 5-star hotel located 500m from national and state highways will not be able to sell or serve liquor from April 1 to prevent drunken driving and road mishaps. In Maharashtra, this will impact 15,699 liquor vends, including wine shops, permit rooms and beer shoppees, which cover 61.53 per cent of the 25,513 retail licences. The number includes 338 vends in Mumbai, including 18 in the island city.

This is estimated to cause a revenue loss of about Rs 11,000 crore in 2017-18 in terms of state excise duties on liquor sales (Rs 7,398 crore), licence fees and sales tax. State excise is the third-highest revenue source for the government, after sales tax and stamp duty and registration departments.

“We are planning relaxations like doing away with the need for no-objection certificates (NOCs) from the police and local gram sabhas if wine shops and country liquor shops want to shift elsewhere. This will apply in areas where wine and country liquor shops already exist,” a senior state excise official told DNA.

He said the condition for an NOC from the police would be relaxed for permit rooms where retail shops were already operational in a 250m area.