Madhya Pradesh government to run liquor shops amid row with contractors

The Madhya Pradesh authorities began preparations on Tuesday to run liquor retailers whose licences have been surrendered by contractors amid a standoff between the 2 sides on reopening the vends.

About 70 per cent contractors have surrendered their licences. They have refused to open their liquor vends for properly over two weeks resulting from poor sale owing to the financial slowdown brought on by the coronavirus outbreak. This had put them on a collision course with the BJP authorities within the state.

The state authorities has now determined to run greater than 1,000 liquor retailers throughout the state until it finds new contractors within the rebidding course of, as per officers.

On Thursday, listening to petitions of liquor contractors, the Madhya Pradesh excessive court docket’s Jabalpur bench stated that those that need to run the retailers as per the state authorities’s guidelines ought to file an affidavit inside three days. It allowed the state authorities to go for rebidding of the remaining retailers.

As per the officers of the state excise division, extra manpower is required to reopen and run the retailers. It has requested the house guard division for help in clean operation of those shops. The income generated from these retailers might be deposited within the sub-treasury of the district with the assistance income division officers.

In his letter to director basic of Home Guard, dated June 7, excise commissioner Rajiv Chandra Dubey stated, “Execution of the (bidding) process after closure of liquor shops is expected to take 15 to 30 days. In the circumstances the department will have to run more than 1000 liquor shops. The department doesn’t have sufficient staff to run such a big number of shops. At the same time, the department has to take action to control (sale of) illicit liquor too. Hence, it is requested that home guards be made available to the districts as per their demands.”

The locations the place liquor contractors surrendered their licences embody main cities like Indore, Bhopal, Jabalpur, Gwalior too.

An excise division official who didn’t need to be named stated, “It will take at least 3 to 4 days in making all the preparations for running the shops in the entire state.”

In state capital Bhopal, district collector Tarun Kumar Pithode issued an order on Tuesday for 32 retailers which make nation made liquor and Indian made international liquor (IMFL) to run. The retailers might be run by the excise division personnel with a supervisor assigned to take care of teams of two to 4 retailers.

Talking to mediapersons, Dubey stated, “The process to run the shops has begun and these will be reopened by Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning.”

The excise commissioner stated that security norms on the retailers like social distancing, sanitisation and so forth could be ensured.

The tug of conflict between the state authorities and the contractors has been happening for a couple of month. The contractors need the licence charges lowered given closure of retailers resulting from Covid-19 and lowered sale after lockdown restrictions have been lifted.

Liquor retailers opened within the state on May 7 after 45 days, however because the state authorities didn’t concede to the contractors calls for to cut back the licence payment, about 30 contractors moved the excessive court docket.

The state authorities was anticipated to have a income of about Rs 10,500 crore within the current monetary 12 months by way of public sale of liquor retailers.