District administration allocated 68 licences for the shops of Country liquor (Cl), beer and Indian Made Foreign liquor (IMFl) through lottery system on Saturday, said Dehradun District Magistrate BVRC Purushottam.
A total of 26 out of 68 licences for liquor shops were allotted to women applicants through lottery system. This comes at a time when women from several villages of the State have been running campaign against consumption of liquors by youths.
The lottery system was conducted at Town Hall, Municipal Corporation of Dehradun campus under the supervision of district officers. To avoid untoward incidents, adequate police personnel were deployed around campus and no one was allowed to enter to the hall. The district officials said that 35 IMFl licences were awarded to the applications on Friday whereas 12 remaining licences were allocated to women applicants through lottery system on Saturday.
The lottery system began in the presence of district officers at 9 am to allocate remaining licences like Cl and beer shops to the applicants. Speaking to The Pioneer, District Magistrate Purushottam said that a total of 29,267 applicants including 9,137 for CMl shops and 19,880 applications for IMFl shops and 250 had submitted their registration forms for procuring as many as 68 liquor licenses including 35 for IMFl, 31 for Cl and two beer shops to the Excise department.
It should be mentioned here is that the department had earned around Rs46.82 crore in the form of registration fees from the applications, who were seeking licence under different category. This year, applicants were charged Rs16,000 per registration fee which was non-refundable. Moreover, the Excise department had earned Rs20 crore in the form of registration fees from the applicants in the year 2012-13, Rs10 crore in 2011-12 and Rs5.63 crore in 2010-11.