Amar Patnaik, the Principal Accountant General (PAG), Economic and Revenue Sector Audit, Kerala, has told the Assembly that there was no transparency in the granting of bar, wine and beer parlour licences during 2014-16.
The findings, tabled in the House on Monday, were widely viewed as an indictment of the Excise Department’s functioning under the previous United Democratic Front government.
The audit “observed defects” in the allocation of bar and beer parlour permits. Some applicants got their bar licences in 11 days. Others had to wait up to 139 days. Scores of applications for permits were kept pending up to 722 days in contrast to many which were sanctioned in 11 days. The Right to Service Act sets 90 days as the time to dispose of liquor permit applications.
The audit could not ascertain the “reason for the pendency” because there was no register or a system that recorded the receipt or disposal of liquor permit applications.
Excise inspectors had not recorded the method adopted to check the hygiene of 418 hotels, which were granted beer/wine permits after their bar licences were revoked in April 2014 on the charge of poor cleanliness.
Out of the 6,695 manufacturers of spirituous pharmaceutical preparations, only 49 had the permit to do so. The failure to identify such unlicensed entities would open the door to the abuse of alcohol-laced concoctions.
At least 18 companies holding liquor permits, all hotels and resorts, had illegally reconstituted their boards without Excise sanction. The department had no system to verify the deeds of such firms and the flaw could result in “ineligible persons” controlling them, the report said.
