Communist Party of India (CPI) State secretary Kanam Rajendran on Friday said the Left Democratic Front (LDF) favoured weaning away people from liquor consumption, as total prohibition was not practicable.
“Liquor ban hasn’t worked anywhere in the world. Further, I don’t think that the current government has initiated concrete steps to reduce liquor consumption. The Bevco outlets witness brisk sale of liquor. The government has only converted bars into wine and beer parlours and their licences were last renewed as recently as April 1. The sales figures indicate a manifold increase in beer and wine consumption across the State, resulting in higher revenue on this count. Our policy, on the other hand, is to promote abstinence from liquor and bring down consumption in a phased manner,” Mr. Rajendran said.
Left policy
Maintaining that substance abuse had gone up after the new liquor policy was introduced, he said the Left parties had their liquor policy formulated on the lines of the A.P. Udayabhanu Commission’s recommendations.
On the Catholic Church’s fervent call for prohibition, he said in a democracy everyone had the right to articulate their opinion. Mr. Rajendran was quick to add that there were other burning issues — like the State’s mounting debt, the ignominy faced by farmers across sectors because of the policies of the State and Union governments, diversion of corpus sum from welfare funds, and the crises faced by public sector undertakings — that the Left front wanted the focus to be on.
However, the media fell into the trap laid by KPCC president V.M. Sudheeran and Chief Minister Oommen Chandy who were trying hard to project ‘liquor’ as a key poll plank, he said.
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