CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government on Friday told the Madras High Court it is mulling on a complete revamp of the scheme for buyback of the empty liquor bottles in the districts where the scheme is under implementation currently.
Advocate General Vijay Narayan made the submission before a special bench of justices N Sathish Kumar and D Bharatha Chakravarthy dealing with forest-related cases.
“We will do a complete revamp of the scheme to make it more effective,” the AG said, adding the government is also exploring the possibilities for excluding the Tasmac liquor outlets from carrying out empty bottle collection.
Further, he said the government is adopting the stand of ‘zero tolerance’ on corruption.
The bench made it clear that its previous order was to collect Rs 10 on every bottle sold in the outlets so as to incentivise the return of the empty bottle and give back the amount when the bottle reaches back.
However, it said, this order for collecting the extra amount is misconceived as a “license” to collect the extra amount above the selling price of liquor.
The bench said if the buyback scheme is not implemented in the right spirit the empty bottles would end up dumped on agricultural land and water bodies causing irreparable damage to the environment.
As sought by the AG, the bench granted eight weeks time for the state to file a report on the complete revamp of the scheme and directed filing of a progress report within four weeks.