HYDERABAD: At a time when excise department officials are holding key meetings to finalise the new excise policy commencing on October 1, the department has received much-needed breather in the form of Supreme Court verdict.With the Supreme Court clarifying on Wednesday that the highway booze ban would preclude the stretches of national highways (NHs) and state highways (SHs) passing through cities, excise officials estimate that only 20 shops will be affected.
The apex court declared that the wine shops and bars located on NHs and SHs within the city limits are exempted from the ban. Thus, the state dropped its plans to denotify the NHs and SHs in the municipal limits. The verdict is also applicable to nagar panchayats, say official sources.
A nagar pachayat’s limit is 220 metres and most of the wine shops are within the limits. If there are any wine shops outside, they will be relocated within the nagar panchayats, the sources explained. Meanwhile, excise officials, who are on the job of finalising the excise policy, have indicated that the total number of slabs for allotting wine shops and bars will be reduced from six to three. The procedure will also be simplified. All the applications will be accepted online and the draw of lots will be conducted by respective district collectors manually.
There will be no increase in the number of shops. However, whether the policy will be for one year or two years and any increase in liquor prices will be decided by the state government. The license fee for a wine shop in GHMC limits is Rs. 1.08 crore. The nomenclature of the license fee has been changed to Excise Tax and the GST will not be applicable to it. The total number of wine shops in the state are 2,216 but only 2,144 are functioning now as no one bid for 72 shops two years ago. The state government got `654 crore revenue through the excise department and Rs. 720 crore on petroleum products in July this year.