Permit raj: City tipplers face the heat

MUMBAI: The city police have got into the spirit of the anti-tippling campaign with the traffic cops booking 836 motorists during a special drive over the weekend.
The crackdown on beer bars and pubs last week also has seen hordes of tipplers queuing up for permits at excise offices in the city and the suburbs.
Drunken driving becomes an offence if 30 milligram of alcohol is found in 100 milligram of blood.The traffic police were posted at 17 spots on Saturday and Sunday nights with breath analysers and radar guns.
They said they had collected Rs 75,000 in fines from motorists for drunken driving and overspeeding at Marine Drive, Peddar Road, the J.J. flyover, Worli seaface, and the Eastern and Western Express highways.
Those charged with drunken driving are generally let off with fines ranging from Rs 500 to Rs 1,000— even though the maximum punishment is a jail term of six months and or a fine of Rs 2,000. Because drunken driving is considered a petty offence, the judicial practice is to opt for a fine rather than a jail term.
Magistrates can also suspend for at least six months the driving licence of those convicted, but this again never happens. In fact, the police say convictions for the offence do not even figure on the offender’s driving licence despite there being a provision for this.
However, the recent publicised raids on nocturnal joints and the activities within seem to have shaken up both occasional tipplers and diehard sods who so far haven’t felt the need to flaunt a permit to quaff their liquor. The Boribunder excise office behind the civic headquarters used to receive about 30 applications a day for the permit.
However, in the last few days since the permit was made mandatory, officials have been handing out at least 100 permits every day. The Bandra excise office too reported a sharp increase in the demand of permit cards.
There are six other excise centres in Mumbai at Andheri, Malvani, Chembur, Opera House and Sewri. Until last week, there were 650,000 permit holders in Maharashtra.