No ban on foreign liquor makers: Minister

DEHRADUN: The Uttarakhand government on Tuesday said any Indian made foreign liquor company is free to enter into wholesale business in the state by paying Rs 41 lakh as licence fee.

Strongly defending the new excise policy, which proposes to levy the new licence fee among others, Excise Minister Madan Kaushik told the state assembly that the government was not stopping any company or brand to open their depots in the state but they have to pay fl-2 licence fee of Rs 41 lakh.

Kaushik said the new policy would end the monopoly of mafia as the government had made it mandatory to submit a domicile of tehsil level with the application.

He also said the hike of processing fee from Rs 200 to Rs 7,500 would ensure that only genuine people submit applications for running shops.

Earlier, he said, mafias used to submit applications for all the shops by paying just Rs 200. Moreover, Kaushik added, now a person can apply only for one shop in the tehsil.

The minister said the policy has been prepared after a thorough study of neighboring states. In Punjab the processing fee is Rs 6,000, in Haryana Rs 5,000 while in Chandigarh it is Rs 7,000, he claimed.

However, dissatisfied with the reply of Kaushik, members of the main opposition Congress staged a walk out.

Raising the issue during zero hour through an adjournment motion, Leader of the Opposition Harak Singh Rawat (Congress) said the new excise policy brought by the BJP government for 2007-08 would result in a revenue loss as it orders closing the liquor shops in the evening when the demand his high.

The previous Tiwari government had set a target of Rs 400 crore as revenue from liquor in the last financial year. This year the target has been fixed at Rs 417 crore and even this will not be achieved due to the new policy where shops are being opened till 1700 hrs only, said Rawat.

Supporting Rawat, Karan Mahra (Congress) said the new excise policy was meant for patronising the liquor mafia as the processing fee has been increased to Rs 7,500 per application from Rs 200.

This is the reason why only 16,000 applications were received this year against 1,84,000 applications received last year, he said.