BENGALURU: Finally, the party-going crowd can cheer. After about two months, bars and pubs located 500m from highways within city limits are all set to reopen as early as Saturday after the Supreme Court clarified the ban is not applicable to bars and other liquor vends within municipal areas. The State Excise Department too is preparing to renew licence of such watering holes. With this, nearly 200 pubs and bars in the central business district in Bengaluru including MG Road, Brigade, Queen’s Road, Indiranagar and other places will reopen in the next few days. Ashish Kothare, chapter head, National Restaurant Association of India, said that with the Supreme Court clarifying on the ban, there is no question of going back to the High Court.
“Most of the bars and pubs have paid the licence renewal fee and are waiting official confirmation from the Excise department. We are hoping that these bars, which were closed for the last two months, will open within a week’s time,’’ he said. On Tuesday, the High Court had dismissed a batch of petitions seeking directions to denotify stretches of national highways passing through Bengaluru and other cities and to renew their excise licences. Justice Vineet Kothari dismissed the petitions of bar and restaurant owners saying the court cannot exercise its jurisdiction in view of the Supreme Court order. Additional Excise Commissioner Rajendra Prasad said they will instruct all Deputy Commissioners to dispose of the applications pending before them as per law.
“If they meet the criteria, their licences will be renewed. A circular has been issued to all deputy commissioners to renew licences,’’ he said. A senior Excise official said there are 10,200 bars and pubs (licence holders) of which 7023 had got their licences renewed by the end of July. Of the remaining, the licences of those eligible will be renewed. He said the licence renewal fee is anywhere between Rs 3 lakh and Rs 6 lakh based on the location. Pubs and bars in cities have to pay more fee than those in semi-urban and rural areas. “On an average, every year, we get revenue of Rs 590 crore from licence renewal fee from all 10,200 pubs and bars. Since there was ban on liquor sale on highways, we got around Rs 400 crore till June,’’ he said. Also, over the last two months, the department has registered a shortfall in revenue of about Rs 200 crore through sales since many liquor outlets were shut.
“This year, the state government targeted a revenue of Rs15,000 crore including from sales, licence renewal and other sources. We are confident of reaching the target, otherwise we would have fallen short of the target by Rs 2,500 crore,’’ he said. Sources in the Excise department said in the old Mysuru region including Kodagu, some owners of pubs and bar which were in rural areas are applying before the Deputy Commissioners to shift outside the 500m radius. Their licences will not be renewed immediately. They can shift after getting permission from the DCs and renewal of their licences will be considered later.
Rs 600 crore loss
Karnataka Wine Merchants Association president Govindaraj Hegde said as many pubs and bars were shut for the last two months, the owners are estimating a loss of about Rs 600 crore including loss of sales, rent, employees’ salaries and other expenses. “Since there is a string of holidays from Thursday, we are expecting to get the nod by Monday or Tuesday. Since many of them are within city limits, only pubs and bars that are in rural areas will be shut,’’ he said.
