VIJAYAWADA: BJP State chief Daggubati Purandeswari called on Union Home Minister Amit Shah in New Delhi on Sunday and sought a CBI probe into alleged corruption in the AP liquor policy.
In a two-page memorandum submitted to the Home Minister, Purandeswari alleged that the sale of cheap liquor was not only taking thousands of lives but also had opened the floodgates to huge corruption, wherein huge sums were being siphoned off to fill the pockets of Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and his cronies.
The BJP leader highlighted that the liquor shops, which used to be auctioned earlier, were now being run by the State-run Andhra Pradesh Beverages Corporation Limited (APBCL).
She said statistics indicate that 80 lakh people in the State consume liquor every day. Even if one assumes that each day, each individual consumes liquor worth Rs 200, then, Rs 160 crore business is done through liquor per day, which translates to Rs 4,800 crore per month and Rs 57,600 crore per year.
“But the revenue from the excise department, as disclosed by the State government, is tentatively around Rs 32,000 crore. Hence, very conservative calculations reveal that Rs 25,000 crore are being siphoned out of the system,” Purandeswari pointed out in her memorandum.
She alleged that 80 per cent of the liquor sales in the State were done in cash instead of digital payments, which indicated high levels of corruption. Besides, many liquor manufacturing companies were taken over by some top YSRC leaders by coercion, Purandeswari alleged. She said that the process of distillation was also under question. “As the rectified spirit, a raw material for manufacturing liquor was not properly distilled, the manufacturing cost of a litre of liquor was limited to Rs 15. However, it was being sold for up to Rs 800 per litre,” the AP BJP president stated.
In the letter, Purandeswari further explained that APBCL procured liquor from the companies only if it was satisfied monetarily. P5