Maharashtra's permit raj dampens spirits, nets paltry Rs 3.5 cr

MUMBAI: In 2013, the state government's earnings from drinking permits - "an antiquated law" that does not exist anywhere else in India—from the entire city of Mumbai will total less than Rs 4 crore.
Sources told TOI the "paltry" revenue collection will continue to hover in this range next year as well. That's not all. Offences registered against patrons for not possessing a liquor consumption permit stand at just 250-300 cases a year.
On New Year's Eve, patrons and bar owners have stepped up their efforts against "the practice used as harassment tool" and asked for reasons why the state government has been sitting on a proposal to abolish the issuance of daily liquor permits to partygoers. To this, excise officials retorted that considering the department's increasing annual revenue targets, even a loss of Rs 4-5 crore from Mumbai mattered a lot.
Bar owners, who said they constantly face a shortage in the supply of permits from the excise department, refuse to buy the argument.
"A meager 0.5% or 1% increase in any of the government taxes will earn the state much more revenue than what they do from these consumption permits. It's deplorable to see the government continue with the age-old practice which was started during the British period to find out how many Indians drank liquor," said Prasanna Satam, a regular patron at a Colaba bar. Excise officials, though, insisted the practice helped them, too, to know the proportion of consumption of country liquor and Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL).
Advocate Veena Thadani said the permit law was implemented in 1964 by the then ‘prohibition and excise department'. The department's ‘prohibition' function was withdrawn 20 years ago and it was renamed the state excise department. "This was done to relax prohibition. Apparently, the state began to earn decent revenue through liquor sale but since it did not want to give the impression of promoting liquor, the government set up a separate propaganda or social wing within the department. Earlier, a doctor's certificate and quota of liquor were mandatory as per the permit. With the whole world turning liberal, it is impractical and irrelevant to continue with the permit system."
Arvind Shetty, president of Ahar, said, "We get complaints about people refusing to pay for the permits, but we still insist on it due to our archaic laws." Ahar's general secretary Shashikant Shetty added these permits were a waste of time and energy. "While convincing people to buy the permits, our waiters face counter-arguments. It is high time the government abolishes the practice," said Akash Thakur, a bar owner in Chembur.
Brijbhushan Verma, a businessman from Andheri, said he had to buy permits for himself and his friends even if they were simply carrying liquor with them after buying bottles from shops. "It was difficult to convince my friends from Singapore that buying such a permit was compulsory to avoid police raids and heavy fines," he said and added that it was a matter of surprise and shock for all his southeast Asian friends. Chandresh Sinha, a regular patron at a Matunga bar, said people were always scared that the police might catch them on their way home.