The Andhra Pradesh and Telangana governments may soon allow online liquor sales with the Supreme Court on Friday giving a green signal to states to consider indirect sale/home delivery of liquor. Hearing a petition filed that sought to ban liquor sales saying overcrowding at liquor shops risk large-scale transmission of coronavirus, the Supreme Court suggested online sale or home delivery of liquor to address the problem of overcrowding.
As per the central government’s directive, those visiting the liquor shops will have to maintain social distance of at least six feet, but this norm was violated in both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana even as the police remained mute spectators. After being closed for nearly two months of lockdown, a surge of tipplers raided the shelves at liquor stores and wine shops across the green and orange zones in Andhra Pradesh after it allowed standalone shops to sell liquor between 12 noon till 7 pm. The AP government even hiked liquor prices by 75 percent claiming that such a hike would ‘discourage’ people from alcohol consumption. This was criticized by the opposition. Allowing liquor sale during the ongoing nationwide lockdown has caused unmanageable over-crowding at liquor stores, making social distancing impossible and defeating the very purpose of a lockdown, TDP president and former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu had pointed out. Such was the over-crowding that the AP government had employed teachers to regulate the massive crowds outside the liquor stores, a move fiercely condemned by Naidu and Pawan Kalyan.
The Telangana government too allowed sale of liquor in all green and orange zones, excluding containment zones, in order to deal with major drop in revenues. Tipplers queued up in large numbers as liquor shops opened in Telangana after a gap of nearly two months. The government’s decision to hike the liquor prices by 16 per cent failed to dampen the spirit of the Bacchus lovers, who started queuing up two-three hours before the shops re-opened.
