Telangana: Excise department plans to involve non-syndicate people in liquor business

Instead of just issuing notification for wine shops and inviting applications from interested candidates, the excise officials are now conducting awareness programmes to the people, who have been in various businesses.

Karimnagar: In order to involve more people, especially new persons in liquor business, prohibition and excise department officials have come up with an innovative idea.

Instead of just issuing notification for wine shops and inviting applications from interested candidates, the excise officials are now conducting awareness programmes to the people, who have been in various businesses.

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Based on the higher officials’ instructions, district officials are conducting meetings with various business community people including real-estate, granite, rice millers, pharmacists and others.

Besides educating about the possibility of getting more profits in the liquor business, transaction and profit details of wine shops located in their localities were also being explained to the business community.

According to excise department sources, there were two reasons behind encouraging business communities to involve in liquor business. One is to check liquor syndicates and another is to get more revenue in the name of application fee.

Syndicates have become a big problem for the officials. Owners of a few wine shops, who were farming syndicates by mobilizing others, were dictating terms in the business.

Though new people got wine shop licenses in the draw of lots, syndicates are forcefully buying shops by paying a minimum amount to original owners.

To put an end to syndicates, officials are contemplating encouraging entry of new people into the business. There are four to five syndicates operating in Karimnagar now.

While applying for shops, applicants have to pay Rs 2 lakh towards the application fee which is non-refundable. So, the government is contemplating enhancing revenue by motivating a more number of people to apply for wine shops.

A senior officer in the excise department said on the condition of anonymity that higher officials have fixed a target of Rs 2,000 crore through application fee.

During the excise year 2021-23, the excise department got Rs 1,400 crore revenue through about 67,000 applications for 2,620 wine shops across the state.

Now, the target has been enhanced to 1 lakh applications and get the revenue of Rs 2,000 crore, he said. In the erstwhile Karimangar district, the department got Rs 104.3 crore revenue as 5,215 applications were filed for 290 shops in 2021-23 excise year.

Authorities are planning to double income this time around.