Law and spirit

Supreme Court's highway liquor ban merits a relook

The illogicality of the Supreme Court’s ban on liquor vending up to 500 metres from national and state highways has been underlined by the scramble by states to circumvent the spirit of the order by reclassifying these roads as urban thoroughfares and hotels and eateries reorienting entrance gates. Given the estimated potential cumulative revenue loss of Rs 65,000 crore to exchequers and countless job losses, the Centre has shown sympathy for states, so the denotification exercise is likely to proceed with pragmatic rapidity. A review petition is also being considered. All of this suggests that states and the hospitality industry will cooperate energetically to defeat the supposed purpose of the ban, which is to prevent death and injuries caused by drunken driving.

It is no one’s case that drunken driving is not an issue. The larger question, however, is the degree to which it contributes to injuries and deaths caused by road accidents. In 2015, an informative report by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways put the number of road accidents at over 500,000, in which 146,000 people died. National and state highways account for a little over half the road accidents, 55 per cent of the injuries and 63 per cent of the deaths. A granular view suggests that drunken driving is not a primary cause. Of the 13 factors the study has listed, the fault of the driver accounts for 77 per cent of accidents. Within this category, speeding accounts for 61 per cent of the deaths — and about 44 per cent of the deaths in total road accidents. Driving under the influence (of drugs or alcohol) accounts for 6.4 per cent of deaths due to drivers’ faults and 4.6 per cent of all fatalities in road accidents.

The apex court appears to have been persuaded by the Community Against Drunk Driving’s evidence that 72 per cent of accidents along the highways are due to drunken driving, which it attributes to the 24-hour availability of alcohol on those routes. This causation does not square with the fact that Gujarat, which has been dry for decades, recorded 361 road accidents and 121 fatalities due to drunken driving in 2015 — more than Karnataka (298 and 62, respectively) or Punjab (118 and 91). Although liquor vending alongside any highway is unwise as a principle, such anomalies suggest an urgent need for upgraded policing rather than a blanket liquor ban.

The Supreme Court has been careful to avoid the notion of judicial overreach by emphasising that it has acted on several central government advisories. In 2004, the National Road Safety Council recommended that licences should not be issued to liquor vends along national highways and the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways issued a similar advisory to states in 2007. But by extending the ban to 500 metres (and 220 metres for less populated areas), the court has gone well beyond the Centre’s 100-metre limit. These limits are odd. What would stop imbibing, say, 600 metres or 1 km off a highway and then driving on it? Where does it leave people who drink in homes within the proscribed perimeter? This limit also enhances the licensing authority’s discretion in gauging distances, raising the spectre of harassment of bars and hotels.