The culture of liquor prevalent in the State is an anti-national phenomenon and one that has to be removed from society, poet and activist B. Sugathumari has said.
She was inaugurating an ‘agitation proclamation convention’ organised here on Tuesday. The government should retract its liquor policy. It needs to be revised at once, she added.
In his benediction address Cardinal Basemios Cleemis said if liquor was indeed so nice a thing then the label on liquor bottles warning that it is harmful to health should be removed at once. But saying on the one hand that liquor is harmful and on the other hand making it freely available is a contradiction.
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The reduction in the distance a liquor outlet has to keep from a school would adversely impact the health of future generations. It is suspicious that that the government refuses to discuss its liquor policy, he added.
Latin Archbishop Soosa Pakiam M in his address said the government should be willing to say no to the income from sale of alcohol. The government has adopted an attitude that is helpful to the liquor lobby, he said.
Former KPCC president V.M.Sudheeran said he would be in the forefront of the agitation against liquor till the government revised its liquor policy. The new liquor policy is one that does not even value the paper on which the election manifesto of the LDF was written.
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All the reasons that the government listed on this issue are false. Even the Excise Department is doling out false figures. A government that cannot distribute rice and ration goods is today opening up new liquor outlets and is leading the State down the path of destruction, he said.
In his presidential address, Palayam Imam V. H. Suhaib Maulavi said the government was being arrogant. It is actually disregarding the proclaimed stand of the CPI(M) Central leadership that the LDF government would not revise the State’s liquor policy, he pointed out. The government should be ready for an open discussion in this matter, he added.
Later, Cardinal Cleemis released a book on the implications of the liquor policy penned by Johnson Idayaranmula.
The convention also resolved to take out protest marches to newly opened liquor shops and hold protest meets in district centres. On September 26 a ‘leadership meet’ of the anti-liquor movement would be held in front of the Secretariat. On October 11 there would be a public march to the Secretariat.
The Latin diocese of Neyyattinkara will stage a dharna on Wednesday at the bus stand junction against the liquor policy. Gandhian Gopinathan Nair is scheduled to inaugurate the event.