Toddy shops in and around Hyderabad are likely to reopen on October 1, precisely ten years after they were closed down on charges of adulteration, following the recent decision of the TRS government to allow the trade.
Though Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had recently announced that the shops would be opened by Dasara, authorities were said to be taking steps to advance the date to coincide with the toddy year from October 1 to September 30.
It was on October 1, 2004, that the Congress government of Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy banned the 103 toddy shops in the then municipal limits of Hyderabad and another 17 in the adjoining areas of Ranga Reddy district after it came across several instances of shop-owners mixing chloral hydrate, diazepam and alprazolam to give consumers the ‘extra high’. Nevertheless, a small quantity of toddy retained the flavour in the drink.
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Sources said the government will shortly appoint a committee to frame the guidelines for the issue of licenses to the shops and trees. The policy presently in the rest of Telangana districts was to collect monthly rentals and licence fee on shops, inclusive of tree tax, for a period of five years from toddy tappers cooperative societies which ran the business.
There were supposed to be 11 members in each society who were leased out individual shops. Where the full compliment of 11 members was not there, individual licences were given under the ‘tree for tappers’ scheme. A total of 43 societies were banned in Hyderabad when the government implemented the norm that the trade was permissible only if toddy trees existed within a radius of 50 km from the municipal limits.
The government earned a revenue of Rs.54 crore in entire Andhra Pradesh and Rs.10 crore in Telangana from toddy tapping ten years ago. Revival of toddy shops in Hyderabad was the election promise of TRS which Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao gave priority to on assuming power.
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