After witnessing incidents of liquor vends being auctioned at higher prices and then surrendered, the UT Administration on Tuesday announced to increase earnest money of liquor vends.
To keep check on such instances, the administration has now announced that each tenderer will be required to furnish pay order/demand draft of Rs 35 lakh as earnest money deposit for a liquor vend.
Earlier, during an auction of liquor vends, a contractors/tenderer had to deposit earnest money of Rs 7 lakh for liquor vends upto Rs 60 lakh, Rs 10 lakh for liquor vends of Rs 60 lakh to Rs 1 crore, Rs 13 lakh for liquor vends auctioned at Rs 1 crore to Rs 1.5 crore. For liquor vends, auctioned for Rs 1.5 to Rs 2.5 crore, an earnest money of Rs 25 lakh was to be deposited while for liquor vends above Rs 2.5 crore, an earnest money of Rs 35 lakh was to be deposited.
“So far, the UT Excise Department has organised four auctions of liquor vends. And, the auctions have witnessed a pattern that some of the vends were auctioned at high prices but later surrendered to ensure monopoly of another contractor in the same area,” said the official.
This time, not a single bid was received by the Department for 74 liquor vends while about 17 vendors surrendered their liquor vends after they failed to pay 30 per cent of the bid amount within the stipulated period of time.
Out of the total 217 liquor vends, the city has 152 IMFl (Indian made foreign liquor) vends and 65 country liquor vends. In last four auctions, the department had managed to auction about 125 liquor vends and the total revenue generated by auctions stands at above Rs 140 crore now. The UT Excise Department could auction only six liquor vends out of remaining 98 vends in the fourth auction. In the first auction, over 50 per cent liquor vends did not receive a single bid.
This year, the auction of liquor vends has received poor response due to the higher license fee. This is the first time when more than two auctions of liquor vends have been organised by the UT.
As expected, the Excise Department suffered huge losses this year due to the shifting of the highest revenue generating liquor vends and taverns being run from pre-fabricated structures along roadside in Chandigarh.