Dehradun district administration allotted 16 out of 72 licences for the shops of Country Made liquor (CMl), beer and Indian Made Foreign liquor (IMFl) to women applicants through lottery system on Wednesday.
Ten out of 39 IMFl shop licences were awarded to women applicants. Four women applicants secured licence of CMl shops. All the two beer shops were awarded to women applicants, said Dehradun district magistrate BVRC Purushottam.
This comes at a time when women from several villages of the State have been running campaign against consumption of liquors by youths. Meanwhile, the Excise department allocated 72 licences for shops of IMlF, CMl and beer for the year 2014-15. DM Purushottam said that a total of 22, 613 applicants had applied to the excise department for procuring these licenses between March 19 and 22, 2014. Out of which 4079 applicants including 1140 women had applied for CMl shops while 18, 339 applicants including 5315 women for IMFl. A total of 195 applicants including 54 women had applied for beer shop licence. Alok Shah, an inspector, Dehradun district excise department said the lottery began under the supervision of DM in the morning on Tuesday and continued till 1.30 am on Wednesday. To avoid untoward incidents, adequate police personnel were deployed around the Town Hall and entry to hall was restricted. The department had taken all possible steps to maintain transparency while allocating liquor shop licenses for a total of 72 liquor shops including 39 Indian Made Foreign liquor (IMFl) and 31 country-made liquor (CMl) and two beer shops to the applicants. The department earned around `40.70 crore in the form of registration fees from the applications. This year, applicants were charged `18, 000 as registration fee which was non-refundable, he added.