No takers for Rs 2 crore liquor licence, UP splits vends to cut fee

After failing to attract bidders for four unsold liquor vends, including three model shops and one country liquor shop, since the fourth phase of the excise e-lottery on April 9, the excise department has restructured the outlets into 11 shops, adding seven new vends to reduce the licence fee burden on the existing four.Officials said the district had struggled to find takers for the model shops, which carried annual licence fee liabilities of Rs 2.2 crore. The restructured and newly created shops will be up for auction in the fifth e-lottery round on May 29.The reorganisation follows an expansion of the district’s liquor network at the start of the financial year, when 25 new shops were introduced along with five that remained unallocated from the previous year for allotment. Of these, 25 were allotted and are currently operational. The remaining five were offered across lottery rounds but found no takers.Officials said though some applicants had applied during each phase but they consistently failed to deposit the licence fee within the stipulated timeline, causing allotments to lapse. In the fourth phase, one model shop was finally allotted, leaving three model shops and one country liquor shop unsettled.“These model shops were carrying licence fees of nearly Rs 2.2 crore each, which was proving too expensive for bidders. The country liquor shop, located in the Chalera area on Dadri main road, is one of the biggest in the district with the highest minimum guarantee quantity of Rs 1.3 lakh, making it unviable,” district excise officer Subodh Kumar said. The three model shops are located in Surajpur, Chapraula and Alpha-1, Greater Noida.Invoking provisions under the UP Excise Policy 2026-27, which allow authorities to reorganise unsold shops after the fourth allotment phase, the department redistributed the pending revenue targets across a larger number of outlets with lower licence costs.“After rationalisation, the licence fee for model shops has been reduced from around Rs 2.2 crore to nearly Rs 1.5 crore, while the minimum guaranteed quantity (MGQ) for the country liquor shop has been brought down from Rs 1.3 lakh to around Rs 80,000,” Kumar said.To recover the nearly Rs 40 crore linked to pending licence fees and revenue targets, the department created seven additional shops — five country liquor vends and two model shops — alongside the four unallocated outlets.“If all 11 shops are settled in the next e-lottery, the department will generate nearly Rs 50 crore through licence fee, MGQ and minimum guaranteed revenue (MGR) alone, apart from annual consumption revenue,” Kumar said.The reorganisation will raise the total number of liquor vends in the district from 501 last financial year to 533. In the previous fiscal, the department generated Rs 2,418 crore in consumption-based revenue against a target of Rs 2,506 crore.