How ‘spirited’ will New Year celebrations be this time in the capital city? With most bars remaining closed in the city after the government’s liquor ban policy, tipplers have been flocking to Kerala State Beverages Corporation outlets and the few bars that are open.
Spurious liquor manufacturers, spirit smugglers, and makers of illicit Indian Made Foreign Liquor too have been in the business like never before, with the police and Excise departments catching quite a few in the recent past.
For New Year, however, things could turn a little more ‘tight’ for tipplers, with the City police launching an excise special drive, which has not been restricted just to raids on illegal liquor sale spots, but to catching drunk drivers as well.
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The last two days, with the checks to continue till January 1, have seen policemen with breath analysers on the road from as early as 3 p.m.
They will be outside most hotels as well on the New Year eve. It remains to be seen how those who usually ring in the New Year in a tipsy way manage to circumvent the police net, and how many of them land themselves in trouble to start the year with.
Unity in opinions is something one rarely gets to see at the Corporation council.
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Take any debate, and the usual trend is for the councillors to take diametrically opposite positions, depending upon the party they belong to.
But last week, an amazing level of unity was witnessed at a council meeting during a debate on allegations by a contractors’ union leader that works in the different wards cannot be started until they grease the palms of the respective councillors.
Though the union leader did not name anyone, all of the councillors participated in a collective outrage over the allegation, which they termed as ‘aimed at bringing disrepute to the council.’
Though some councillors were brave enough to demand that the leader reveal the names, most kept that specific demand out from their responses.