HYDERABAD: The State Excise Department is expected to rake in over Rs 1,257 crore from the 62,886 applications it received for granting licences to liquor shops for the excise year 2021-23. Even after the deadline to submit liquor shop applications ended, serpentine queues were witnessed at various places across all 34 excise districts, on Thursday.
About 300-400 applicants were still in queue to submit their applications, when the last reports came in. The process continued till late in the night. The revenue and number of applications received this year is higher than that of last year.
In the year 2019-21, the department had generated Rs 968 crore revenue with about 48,032 applications. However, the figures are expected to witness a major surge this year as 404 more stores have been set up. With this, the number of liquor stores in the State has reached 2,620, whereas it was 2,216 last year. The department also allowed applicants to submit more than one application for A4 liquor shop.
New applications were called under the new liquor policy on November 9. While the applications will be scrutinised on Friday, the liquor shops would be allotted through a draw of lots on November 20. The process would begin at 11 am at the Maharana Pratap Function Palace in Amberpet.
Though the application process was slow initially, as a result of which the department got only 14,751 applications by November 16, it picked up pace and the department received about 15,939 applications in a single day (Wednesday), taking the total to a whopping 30,690 by the penultimate day.
In a relief to the applicants, it has been decided that a licensee can pay annual Special Retail Excise Tax (SRET) in six equal installments during the license period of 2021-23, instead of four in force till now.