Hitting at the BJP, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia who holds the charge of the Excise Department on Saturday alleged that the the BJP  of playing dirty politics to promote liquor mafia in Delhi, like it has in Gujarat.

Sisodia accused the BJP leaders of continuously threatening private liquor shop owners and the Delhi Government officials with the enquiry of Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and due to this many shop owners are leaving the business and officials are not ready to do tender for allotting new licences.

“Now that the excise policy of the Delhi Government is expiring on July 31, officials are not ready to take this policy forward. Then there will be no excise policy in Delhi and this will allow the BJP to reestablish their illegal liquor business like Gujarat. “They were running an illegal liquor business in Gujarat and they wanted to do it now in Delhi also. In Gujarat, alcohol is prohibited, but illegal liquor (nakli sharab) worth thousands of crores is sold there, taking the Government for a ride,” he said.

“It is spurious liquor due to which people have died… Ye saara dhanda inke hi log chalate hain (this whole business is run by their people… There are multiple cases of people dying, but this illegal sale of liquor is flourishing despite that. This is the Gujarat model,” Sisodia said at a Press conference while announcing that the Government had to roll back the new excise policy and that from August 1 liquor will be sold only in Government outlets.

“The other is the Delhi model. Our Government brought a new excise policy last year before which alcohol was sold in Government outlets that were prone to corruption — from brand pushing to many other such things. Some shops were private but that was given to their friends, and a very minimal licence fee was charged from them. We ended this system and started a new policy,” he said.

Sisodia said earlier the revenue from alcohol sales was `6,000 crore annually, and under the new policy it was to be `9,500 crore. “But because the corruption stopped, a plan was hatched by these people to ensure the failure of the new policy.

“One by one, they threatened private players in the name of the ED and CBI. Many of them shut shop. Under the new policy, there could have been 850 shops (like earlier) but currently, 468 are operational,” he said.

Sisodia also cited data from the BJP-ruled States. He said in Gurugram, there was one alcohol shop for 4,166 people, while in Noida, Bengaluru, and Goa, there was one shop for 1,390, 12,189, and 761 people, respectively.

“In Delhi, even if maximum shops had opened (850), the figure would have been one alcohol shop for 22,707 people. With 468 shops, it is one shop for 41,192 people,” he pointed out. The Delhi Government’s move comes amid an ongoing investigation by the Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW) and a face-off between Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena who recommended a CBI probe over the new excise policy 2022 which is not notified or approved by the Raj Niwas.