Gujarat: 19 new liquor shops get in-principle nod

GANDHINAGAR: To boost the tourism sector, a high-powered committee of the state government has given in-principle approval for 19 new liquor shops at premium hotels, which are likely to be given licences ahead of the coming Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit in January 2019. With these 19 new liquor shops, the total number of liquor shops in the state will touch 77, almost thrice the number of shops in 2014.
The high-powered committee headed by the state tourism secretary cleared the 19 new shops and recommended that the state home department to issue these hotels licences.

An officer privy to the development said, “Applications for new liquor shops were pending for long. At the last committee meeting, these applications were discussed and it was decided to grant permission to almost all the hotels, except for the conditional permission granted to a few. Now the director of prohibition and the home department will follow up with the necessary action to grant the final licences to these new hotels. The hotels requested that clearance be granted ahead of the Vibrant Summit to better serve tourists.”
The number of liquor shops in the state doubled from 26 in 2014 to 58 in 2018.
Till April 2014, Ahmedabad had just five liquor shops. By January 2016, the number had reached 11. Two liquor shops have been allowed within a 500m radius of Mahatma Gandhi’s historic Sabarmati Ashram. Anand had one shop in 2014 and two more came up in May 2015. Kutch had seven shops in 2014 and four more got permission after that. Gandhinagar has seen two new shops up come and the state capital now has a total of three. Two new shops got licences recently in Surat. Bhavnagar, Junagadh and Surendranagar had no permit shops. There are now five shops in these three cities. New licences have also been granted in Rajkot, Jamnagar and Bharuch in the last two and a half years.
Notification out but no permits issued
The state government issued a new notification on granting and renewing health permits for liquor consumption on October 30, which had been suspended for more than six months. Despite this, the prohibition department has not started issuing new permits or renewing old ones. A senior officer privy to the development said, “Under the new set-up, a designated board is supposed to vet applications. This board has not been formed. Moreover, new forms have not been printed yet, so all district officers are asking for clarifications. Applicants also don’t yet know where to go for applications. The government is trying to set up a new system which could take another one or two more months.