Excise Rules Flouted Totally! City’s ‘Wine Gate’ sells Rs 59952 Worth of Liquor to ONE Person?
Excise Rules Flouted Totally! City’s Rathna’s ‘Wine Gate’ sells Rs 59952 Worth of Liquor to ONE Person on the Opening Day (4 May) of liquor shops in the State. While some said there was No Limit to buy liquor, but as per one liquor outlet owner in the City, he said,a s per Excise dept, the permissible limits are 18.2 litres of Beer (roughly two cases), 2.3 litres of State Made Liquor (IMFL), 4.5 litres of fortified wine etc. But no one knows which rule is the RIGHT one- one can buy unlimited liquor or you have to buy only the limited quantity. Or could be that Limit rule by Excise dept is just for the heck of it, similar to all our other rules in the State, which no one goes by them, including those who implemented them? But if the latter is true, why did this Wine shop named “Rathna’s Wine Gate” sell Rs 59952 worth liquor beyond excess limit to ONE person-which should be investigated by the Excise Department Officials. Whether they’ll do it, is a billion-dollar question? You know what I mean…
Mangaluru : Even though the Tipplers of our State are not “COVID-19 Warriors”, but they sure are the “ECONOMY WARRIORS?”. For the fact, Karnataka State raked in Rs 45 crore from liquor revenue on day 1 (4 May), and those tipplers who bought a bunch of their favourite booze are lucky, because as of today ( 5 May) the new prices will click in. The joy of liquor lovers is short lived as they need to shell out more to buy the liquor from Today, as Government has ordered a hike on the price of liquor from May 5. Accordingly, the Excise department has decided to increase the price of liquor by 6%. The actual order was passed during state budget to be implemented from April 1. However, the same could not be implemented because of the lockdown. The liquor was sold at the old price on Monday, May 4. The increase is done on all the 18 announced price slabs of liquor. This means that the price of a 180 ml liquor bottle will shoot up by Rs three to Rs 30.
Unlike many parts of the State where tipplers lined up in front of watering holes well ahead of their opening to buy liquor, no long queues were seen near liquor shops in Mangaluru before 9 a.m on Monday when standalone shops opened their shutters. However, people in some areas began to trickle in as the day progressed. The government had allowed sale of liquor in CL2 (standalone wine shops) and CL 11 (MSIL outlets) to mop up revenues when Lockdown-3 commenced from Monday. The large queues were seen in front of only mega liquor outlets like Wines & Spirits at Kadri, Rathna’s Wine Gate at Balmatta, and M Pais and Sons-Maidan Road, while other liquor shops showed steady flow of customers.
At some mega liquor outlets in Mangaluru, few common people had to wait in the blazing hot sun to buy their one or two bottles, while the rich guys trying to get rid of their black money, where buying liquor in huge quantities, taking their own time, and thus making others with hard earned money to wait in the line to purchase their limited quantity as per excise rule, if it so. And for many tipplers a near six-week long dry spell ended on Monday, and they did not want to take any chances- so at quite a few liquor shops in the city, people were seen standing in the queue since 8 am.
Even though many of the bigger liquor shops had security/police personnel to monitor the situation, but none of them bothered to check, what quantity of liquor a person was buying- probably because of their attitude like- “It’s none of my business”?. Even though many tipplers were seen wearing face masks- but more than guarding themselves from the spread of Covid-19, but more from the need to remain unidentified? While bunch of the cities liquor shops maintained strict social distancing, but quite a few other liquor shops in outskirts of the city, the norms of social distancing went for a toss. With heavy rush on the first day, few of the liquor shops ran low on stock, therefore decided to close earlier than 7 pm.
So, today being the Second day of liquor sales, we will have to wait and see what strange things will crop up, in order for Team Mangalorean to make yet another story for your reading pleasure- so until then, enjoy reading this earlier article one more time- CHEERS! Happy Days are Back Again for Tipplers as they Queue Up to Buy Their Favourite Booze and CHEERS!