A Division Bench of the Kerala High Court on Friday struck down as discriminatory and arbitrary the amendments to the Foreign Liquor Rule, 2011, which deny bar licence to new three-star hotels and prescribe distance norms for sanctioning bar licence to new hotels having four-star rating and above.
The Bench of Justice C.N. Ramachandran Nair and Justice K. Vinod Chandran delivered the verdict while allowing a batch of writ petitions filed by various three-star hoteliers challenging the amendments. The petitioners contended that the amendments were discriminatory since it had not been made applicable to existing three-star hotels. Besides, the amendment that prohibited bar licence to new four-star hotels and those with higher ratings wherever another four-star hotel or one with higher ratings functioned within a 3-km radius in panchayat areas and 1-km radius in municipal and corporation areas was violative of Article 14 of the Constitution (equality before law).
The State government took the stand that the new amendments were brought in to reduce the consumption of liquor in the State.
Tourism
The court pointed out that the Union Ministry of Tourism had made classification of hotels and allowed them to have bar licence as part of promotion of tourism. In fact, tourism was promoted for earning foreign money. The court said that making liquor unavailable in three-star hotels would not achieve the objective of reducing liquor consumption. In fact, when liquor was available in around 400 retail shops of the Kerala State Beverages Corporation and the State Cooperative Consumer Marketing Federation and around 700 bar hotels, the government could not bring down consumption of liquor by denying licence to one class of star hotels.
The court added that the government could not discriminate between existing three-star hoteliers and new three-star hoteliers as the latter were entitled to get equal treatment.
The Bench observed that the amendment denying bar licence to new four-star hotels and those with higher ratings by invoking the distance norms would not promote liquor consumption among local people at all. Nor would non-availability of liquor in such hotels bring down the consumption of liquor in the State. In fact, all star hotels functioned side by side in all tourism centres. Besides, such an amendment would stultify the hotel business and destroy the tourism policy of the government, besides preventing business promoters from venturing into the hotel sector.
The court directed the government to take a decision on the applications filed by the petitioners seeking bar licence for their three-star hotels.
