Cabinet’s no to fresh liquor vend auctions

Ambika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Solan, February 27

Even as the fund-starved state government is chalking out ways to mobilise resources, the decision of the state Cabinet to reverse its decision of executing fresh auctions of liquor vends and merely renew old licences would cause a revenue loss of Rs 500 crore.

Highly placed sources in the Excise and Taxation Department told The Tribune that fresh auctions would have fetched Rs 1,500 crore in revenue, but the decision to merely renew the vends, which were allotted eight years ago, would cause a steep fall in revenue collection.

It was worth mentioning that the state Cabinet had decided to go in for fresh auctions of liquor vends as saturation in revenue collection had been noticed with merely renewing old licences. This decision was, however, reversed in the Cabinet meeting held yesterday.

Sources in the department said Rs 150 crore in excise revenue was stuck up as licensees were defaulting in making monthly payments and quite a few of them were yet to even deposit genuine legal documents which are pledged as security.

Though steps such as enhancing the liquor quota have been introduced in the new policy, officials were sceptical that all vends would be auctioned at the reserve price fixed by the department. This happened as liquor traders first desisted from opting for vends where reserve price was high and later forced the officials to negotiate for lower price, causing a huge revenue loss to the state government.

While officials hesitated from commenting on this issue, it was learnt that a section of officials who had failed to ensure timely collection of revenue from the licensees had heaved a sigh of relief as they would get time to realise Rs 150 crore.

Besides, the government had suffered a loss of revenue from the auction of the Parwanoo unit of the inter-state barrier where the licensee had failed to pay about Rs 6.13 crore and the new contractor was granted the licence on much lower rates.