Rawat unlikely to withdraw excise policy

Despite facing flak from the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP), the Uttarakhand government is unlikely to withdraw its controversial new excise policy that would allegedly monopolise the wholesale foreign liquor (FL-2) business in the hill state.

Chief Minister Harish Rawat said, "This is a very good policy. Everything will be done through a proper tender process."

The BJP had been alleging an "under table" deal with a top business house. Rawat said the new policy has been made on lines of the Solan experiment in Himachal Pradesh, where Mohan Meakin Group had carried out lots of development.

The BJP had approached the Election Commission against the Congress-led government for changing the state excise policy to "generate election funds worth crores of rupees" for Lok Sabha poll.

Through this order, the BJP had alleged the government was trying to give the contract of the wholesale FL-2 business to only two companies on the lines of Uttar Pradesh.

But the state government later clarified to the EC that it had withdrawn the controversial order. But last week, the leader of the opposition, Ajay Bhatt, again alleged that the government was going ahead with its plan to change the excise policy.

The government on March 29 issued the order stating that from June 2014, the wholesale FL-2 would be sold only through two centres -Dehradun and Rudrapur in Udhamsingh Nagar district. Through this order, the government had tried to cancel the wholesale liquor policy where all the big companies were entitled to open their depots in the state.

But through this, the government had allegedly restricted the sale of foreign liquor through the two centres or companies only, said Bhatt. "This has also meant that the government was making an under table agreement with some big liquor mafias on the lines of Uttar Pradesh," Bhatt alleged.

Bhatt further alleged the new policy would have also harmed the state's revenue in a big way as the government used to get license fees from over 40 companies through the original policy.