For the past few days, buying their preferred brand of liquor has become quite a task for customers in city.
Wine shop owners are clearing the existing stock and not buying new stock as the two-year licence, issued by the Telangana Prohibition and Excise Department in September 2017 to run a wine shop, expires at the end of this September.
The situation is expected to continue for a few more days at least.
The stock is being cleared and not replenished as shop owners are not certain whether they will be lucky to get the licence again to run the stores for the next two years.
Telangana Wine Dealers’ Association president D. Venkateshwar Rao said that they are hoping the existing licence would be extended by one or a few more months as time is too short to call for applications and issue licences by September 30. There are around 234 wine shops in greater Hyderabad, and 2,300 in the entire State.
“Bank employees have announced a strike on September 26 and 27 (Thursday and Friday), followed by fourth Saturday and Sunday. Besides, its half-year ending for banks on Monday, which means banks will be closed for customers on Monday too. The process of issuing new licence cannot be completed from Monday to Wednesday this week. So we are anticipating that the existing licences will be extended,” Mr Rao said.
He said that since the store owners don’t know if there will be any changes to the Excise Policy, issued every two-years, they are clearing all stock available with them. The Excise Policy has details on Annual Retail Shop Excise Tax, fee for applications to get licence, rates of different forms of alcohol. People expressed apprehensions that liquor might be sold at a price more than MRP as there is shortage of alcohol. However, the Excise Department officials and the association members said that scope for such violations is less as punishment for price violations is too high.
“If alcohol is sold at a price higher than the MRP, ₹2.5 lakh fine will be slapped on the store,” said an excise official.
Mr Rao said that no store owner would risk indulging in price violation as the he would incur by shutting down shop for two weeks will be more then the profit he could make.
