New excise policy comes a cropper as bidders stay away

Ambika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Solan, March 27

With more than 90 per cent of the liquor units remaining unsold in the entire south zone comprising Solan, Sirmaur, Shimla and Baddi excise districts, the new excise policy has come a cropper.

The officials were now reappropriating the liquor units by reducing the number of vends as the exercise to add more vends to the existing units had backfired.

Some success was achieved in Solan district. There also only two units were sold for Rs 27.82 crore in the first two rounds while the remaining five units failed to attract buyers. Vends worth about 50 crore were yet to be sold. In Sirmaur, Baddi and Shimla districts not even a single unit has been sold in the initial rounds. The officials were now reappropriating the size of these units to attract buyers.

Additional Commissioner KK Sharma said they were hopeful of selling the remaining vends on March 29. An exercise to relocate the closed vends was already underway in the field. He said the department was capable of running the vends on their own in case contractors tried to exert pressure by abstaining from the auctions as a number of public sector enterprises too bought a good chunk of the liquor.

More than 700 vends in the state had been closed following apex court directions to do away with the vends situated within a purview of 500 m from the state and the national highways. The officials had merged the quota of these closed vends in the remaining vends in a bid to ensure that revenue did not suffer.

Licensees, however, rued that nearly 50 business had been hit. They contended that instead of reducing the quota the current excise policy has affected an increase of approximately 30 per cent in the form of 14.5 per cent in CL license fee, 14.9 per cent in Indian Made Foreign Liquor license fee and 15 per cent by way of service tax. This is excluding the increase in basic licence fee. As the shops selling more than 50 per cent of quota have been closed, the remaining vends cannot be expected to achieve sales targets of more than 200 per cent.

They also rued that the move to adjust 5 per cent security taken from the licensees on the date of availing tenders in the month of March 2018 instead of April, would create a huge cash crunch. This was especially so as the security was as high as 23 per cent.