Worried about vanishing jobs and falling revenue in a cash-starved State, the Mamata Banerjee Government on Wednesday displayed the proverbial “will” to find a “way” to bypass the Supreme Court’s ruling banning sale of liquor within a distance of 500 metres from the outer edges of National or State highways.
In a spirited, two-pronged strategy, the State Government has declassified 275 km of State highways passing through municipal areas and dubbed them as “arterial” or “municipal roads” so that these roads will not be in the purview of the liquor ban order.
“Now these roads will be looked after jointly by the municipalities and the PWD,” a senior official said.
The second strategy is to relax shifting rules to help bar-cum-liquor shops functioning by the National and State Highways. As part of the strategy, the Government has decided to waive the shifting fee should the shop owners decide to relocate their “watering holes” beyond the 500 metre mark.
The Government has also waived the license fee and exempted the owners from having to apply for a new license. “The owners will not have to make a new license if they want to shift the shop to a new address. They will be able to continue with the old license,” said the official.
This has been done as the SC’s order is not only causing a revenue loss of more than Rs1,000 crore to the State, but will also render several thousand people working in 1,700 closed liquor shops along highways, jobless.
With West Bengal’s job scenario dwindling as never before in the past decade or so, thanks to a steady flight of industry, particularly in the wake of land movements in Singur and Nandigram, the highway liquor ban tends to rub salt in its economic injuries. This has led the desperate State Government to come out with this innovative way to bypass the highway booze ban.
However, the official would not comment on the fate of the State’s declassification notification, posted on its website on March 16, should it be challenged in court, on the ground of the Apex Court’s order.
“let us hope the notification is not challenged and everything goes on smoothly” the senior official said, adding that the State would soon request the Centre to find better options so that the loss of revenue is stopped, jobs are saved and the ban is enforced.