After 42 days of closure, standalone liquor shops would begin sale of the heady brew from Monday under police watch between 10 am and 7 pm across Uttar Pradesh.
The sale timings have been reduced by three hours and vends in hotspots or containment zones would remain closed, officials confirmed.
The decision to open the shops was taken by the Uttar Pradesh government on Sunday, a day before lockdown 3.0 begins with some relaxations across specified zones.
Beer joints and regular bars across the state would remain closed as the excise department officials said they were trying to work out a method to ensure minimum ‘contact’ sales.
Principal secretary, excise, Sanjay R Bhoosreddy, while confirming the decision to open standalone liquor shops, said the excise department would release a detailed guideline on the sale of liquor that would be done in police presence to avoid overcrowding.
“Excise department people would also be present at all liquor shops during the sale,” he said, adding that all liquor shops would not have more than five people at any point in time.
The state government is staring at a loss in excess of Rs 32,000 million (Rs 3,200 crore) due to the extended closure of liquor vends.
Meanwhile, all the vends whose country-made wholesale liquor licence had expired on March 31 but were unable to clear their stock due to lockdown that was enforced since March 22, would be given 7 days time to clear their stock.
Also, due to the lockdown, the state government has decided to relax the binding on liquor sellers to lift complete mimimum guarantee quota (MGQ) of country-made liquor for March 2020. The department has also relaxed the MGQ clause for April as the liquor sellers had approached the excise department saying that due to lockdown there was no way they could fulfil the excise policy clause of picking a certain pre-fixed quota of countrymade liquor from the government.
“We have also relaxed the binding on such liquor shops selling Indian Made Foreign Liquor and beer to generate 20 per cent or higher sale revenue in 2019-20 as compared to the revenue earned in corresponding period in 2018-19,” Bhoosreddy said.
