In an irony, while the women remain in the vanguard of the anti-liquor stirs being staged across the State many women have been awarded liquor licenses by the State excise department through lottery held at the district headquarters on Tuesday and Wednesday.
State Excise officer BS Chauhan said that in Dehradun, as many as 19 women traders have been awarded liquor licenses. A total of 7785 persons, including women, had submitted applications for procuring licenses for the 70 shops out of 80 in Dehradun district.
In Chamoli district, two out of 12 liquor shops have been released to the women while two out of nine liquor shops would be run by the women in Rudraprayag, eight out of 18 liquor shops in Pauri, three out of 15 liquor shops in Tehri, two out of 15 liquor shops in Uttarkashi, three out of 12 liquor shops in Bageshwar, three out of 35 liquor shops in Almora and six out of 14 in Pithoragarh. However, no shop was allocated to the women in Bageshwar district. The excise officers of three districts -Haridwar, Udham Singh Nagar and Nainital –are yet to submit such reports to the state excise department, he added.
Barring 66 liquor shops for which no application was submitted, licenses were awarded for 437 shops to sell Country Made liquor (CMl), Beer and Indian Made Foreign liquor (IMFl) through lottery system held in each of the 13 districts on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the district administration officers were busying in awarding licenses to the traders.
Notably, the number of applications seeking licenses to run booze shops has seen a drastic fall this year principally thanks to the anti-boozing stirs being staged across the state. As per the state excise department officer, two applications have been received for nine shops in Almora district, two applications for two liquor shops in Champawat, one application for one shop in Chamoli, one application for one shop in Udham Singh Nagar, two applications for nine shops in Pauri, one application for one liquor shop in Uttarkashi and four applications for four shops in Tehri.