The Kerala Government has embarked on its total-liquor-ban-in-ten-years plan based on the belief that curtailing availability of liquor would bring down consumption. But it is now apparent that this belief may be misplaced as consumption had fallen only by one per cent in the first five months of the current fiscal though nearly 60 per cent of the total bars had been lying closed since March 31 last.
Statistics provided in an affidavit to the High Court on Saturday by the Kerala State Beverages Corporation (Bevco), the State-run monopoly liquor distributor, a total of 98.43 lakh cases of hard liquor was sold in the five months since the closure of 418 of the total 730 bars on March 31 whereas the figure for the corresponding period last year was 99.55 lakh cases.
Bevco had on September 26 told the court in a case related to bar owners' petitions challenging the Government order to close down their establishments that its sales turnover had increased by Rs 517 crore in the five months since the closure of the 418 bars creating a feeling that the bar closure was not effective in bringing down consumption.
The new Bevco statistics has only led to more confusion with regard to the practicality of the Government's programme of eradicating the “menace” of liquor in ten years. “If the Bevco figures are real, the Government's claim that one of the ways to bring down liquor consumption is to curtail availability is hollow,” said a former Excise Department official.
Bevco filed the affidavit on Saturday following a High Court directive issued on the basis of petitions filed by Congress MlA TN Prathapan and others arguing that there were flaws in the statistics. Prathapan alleged that a lobby within Bevco was trying to sabotage the liquor ban move initiated by the Congress-led UDF Government. .
As per the affidavit, the off-take of liquor from Bevco's wholesale depots, which was roughly the liquor sold through the bars, had come down to 24.97 lakh cases in the first five months of the current fiscal from the 32.21 lakh cases in the same period last year, registering a less-than nine-percent fall while the percentage of bars lying closed since March 31 was nearly 60 percent.
At the same time, the sale of liquor through the 384 retail outlets in the State had gone up between March 31 and August 31 to 73.46 lakh cases as against 67.34 lakh cases during the same period last year, indicating that boozers who used to depend on bars had tuned in large numbers to the retail outlets.
Prathapan challenged the statistics given in the new affidavit as well. “They have now revised the earlier estimates after I pointed out the flaws. But even this is wrong and I am sure there has been greater fall in liquor sales since the closure of the 418 bars. Some people in Bevco are deliberately trying to defeat the new liquor policy of the Government,” he alleged.
As per the liquor policy announced by the Government in August, the 418 bars closed for lack of infrastructure on March 31 last would not be reopened whereas 292 of the remaining 312 bars were to be closed by September 12, though this did not happen because of an intervention by the Supreme Court which ruled that these bars could function till the High Court settled the case.
Meanwhile, the owners of the 292 functioning bars have decided to keep their shops open on Sunday despite the Government order that all Sundays would be no-booze days. As per the new liquor policy, all Sundays since October 5 are to be observed as no-booze days, thus adding 52 more dry days to the list of the already existing no-booze days.
Bar owners say that they would not abide by this rule as the Supreme Court had allowed them to maintain status quo by which they could follow the old liquor policy. They wrote to the Excise Commissioner explaining this standpoint and demanding that new dry days should not be introduced till the High Court settled the case finally.