After facing stiff protests from different quarters over the issue of extending the timing for sale of liquor till midnight in five major cities of the State, the Excise Department on Tuesday came out with a clarification that the new timings are applicable only to on-shop foreign liquor outlets.
The clarification issued by the department said the October 22 notification had 'mistakenly' said that new timings were applicable to both on and off-shops. On realising the mistake, the department had 'immediately' issued a revised notification on October 25 making it clear that the new business hours were restricted only to on-shops in the five cities, Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Brahmapur, Sambalpur and Rourkela.
While several newspapers had carried the October 22 notification, they ignored the revised one issued on October 25, the department regretted.The decision to extend the business hours had been taken after owners of on-shops in general and hotels in particular objected to earlier timings of 10.30 am to 10.30 pm, the department said.