Highway liquor ban: Punjab amends excise bill to sidestep SC order

Punjab has found a way around the Supreme Court’s directive that liquor cannot be sold within 500 metres of a state or national highway. It has amended its excise act. Punjab was the first state to take this route around the directive.

On Friday (June 23) Punjab’s parliamentary affairs minister Brahm Mohindra tabled the Punjab Excise (Amendment) Bill, 2017, during its budget session and was passed.

What the amendment in the bill purported to do was to ensure that hotels, restaurants, clubs and other notified places could serve alcohol to customers only for consumption within their premises to secure the livelihood of a large segment of population.

However, sale of liquor for takeaway purposes shall be permitted only through licensed vends which shall not be located within 500 metres from the outer range of the national or state highway or a service lane of those roads, as per media reports.

It was passed mainly by the majority Congress MLAs present in the house. Legislators from the Aam Aadmi Party and the Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party combine had earlier staged a walkout during question hour.

Other actions taken by other states such as Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal and the Union Territory of Chandigarh was in denotifying hundreds of kilometres of highways as local roads in order to bypass the Supreme Court ruling.

—India Legal  Bureau