Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh government Tuesday kick-started the process to run liquor shops whose licences were ‘surrendered’ by contractors amid a stand-off between the two sides on reopening the vends. Around 70 per cent of the contractors in Madhya Pradesh have refused to open their liquor vends for well over two weeks fearing poor sales due to the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus outbreak. This had put them on a collision course with the BJP government in the state.
“The government will run liquor shops till it finds new contractors for them in rebidding,” Madhya Pradesh Excise Commissioner Rajeev Dubey said Tuesday. The process to reopen liquor shops has begun. They would be reopened by this evening (Tuesday) or tomorrow (Wednesday),” he added.
Nearly 1,800 liquor shops in MP had been closed by contractors. A few of them have decided to reopen their outlets and not surrendered their contracts, informed Dubey.
“We need manpower to reopen and run these shops. It is not an overnight affair. We have to first clean and sanitise the shops that the government will take over,” Dubey said.
The government’s move to run liquor shops came after the MP High Court issued June 4 an interim direction to contractors. It asked them to furnish affidavits within three working days and state if they were ready to reopen vends.
A majority of the contractors have expressed their unwillingness to reopen their shops, officials said. A division bench of Chief Justice AK Mittal and Justice VK Shukla had said the government was entitled to auction liquor shops afresh if their contractors don’t submit affidavits in the given time.
The stand-off started when the government issued an order to liquor contractors to reopen their shops after coronavirus-induced lockdown was eased last month.
“We got the contract to sell liquor at a very high price for this fiscal (FY2020-21). The government, instead of consulting us over reopening the shops, issued the order May 19 unilaterally,” a contractor said. “It is next to impossible to sell liquor at such a high contract price in MP due to the downturn,” he added.
Liquor sales, a key source of revenue for the government, have dropped drastically in Madhya Pradesh due to the coronavirus outbreak and its fallout.