The Kerala High Court order on May 31 that the Supreme Court ban on liquor shops and beer parlours along the National Highway (NH) would not be applicable to those along the Cherthala-Oachira-Thiruvananthapuram and Kannur-Vengalam-Kuttippuram stretches has raised hopes of owners of over 30 liquor shops and bars in Mahe that were forced to shut down in compliance with apex court’s ban.
32 outlets
As many as 32 liquor shops and bars out of 60 in the erstwhile French enclave, which is now part of the Puducherry State, have remained closed for the past two months following the Supreme Court’s ban.
Two of them have since been shifted elsewhere in Mahe and another two to Karaikal, another outlying territory of Puducherry.
The High Court order citing a 2014 notification of the Central government excluding the stretches of the road from the list of NHs has come as a relief for the owners of liquor shops and bars in Mahe who are already out to prove that the highway stretch in Mahe is not a national highway.
“The Mahe Liquor Merchants’ Association (MLMA) has already obtained a letter from the Ministry of Road Transport saying that the road passing through Mahe is not NH,” said C. Ashok Kumar, legal adviser to the association. According to a 1977 notification, if an NH stretch is not required for developing it into a four-lane highway in future and if the State government is prepared to maintain it, that stretch will be treated as district road, he said.
The MLMA has already represented to the authorities in Mahe in the wake of the High Court order and is hopeful that they would be reopened. According to it, the closure of the bars/liquor shops in Mahe left 600 people jobless. As the price of liquor in Mahe is cheaper than that in Kerala, Mahe is a destination of tipplers from the neighbouring areas in Kerala.
When contacted, Mahe’s Regional Administrator S. Manickadeepam told The Hindu that any decision on reopening of liquor shops and bars would be taken at the level of the Excise Commissioner in Puducherry.
Admitting that the MLMA representatives had met him on Wednesday with a copy of the Kerala High Court’s judgment, Mr. Manickadeepam said he would forward their representation to the commissioner. He also said that since Mahe was under the jurisdiction of the Madras High Court, the issue also involved legal implications.
