Plea alleges violation in allotment of liquor vends

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 1

Less than 10 days after the allotment of liquor vends in Chandigarh, an application was today filed before the Punjab and Haryana High Court for staying the process.

Among other things, it was contended that the entire process of allotting the liquor brands was being done in complete violation of the very object the policy. Directions are also sought for maintenance of status quo in the matter.

As the petition filed by Rajbir Singh came up for hearing before the Bench of Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain and Justice Ashok Kumar Verma through video-conferencing, senior advocate Anand Chhibbar and Vaibhav Sahni claimed that one of the grounds for challenging the UT excise policy was monopolisation and cartelisation of the trade as it did not prevent a single person or a group from obtaining more than maximum 10 vends through different entities and backend deals.

Chhibbar said a perusal of results would show that one entity had been allotted 15 vends through two corporate entities. He said a background check of the two entities revealed that the directors of both entities were common. Even their registered email ID was same.

The High Court has already ruled that allotment of liquor vends would be subject to final outcome of the writ petition challenging Chandigarh’s excise policy for 2020-21. The notice and assertion came after the Bench of Justice Rajan Gupta and Justice Karamjit Singh was told on the previous date of hearing that certain departmental stores had been given licence to sell foreign liquor at Rs20 lakh, while L-2 retailers had to pay approximately Rs4 crore as licence fee.

Chhibbar had also described the policy adopted by the Administration as “wholly arbitrary” and beyond the “scope of legislative bounds” while submitting that the policy was leading to complete cartelisation and monopoly of certain individuals through their firms.