The present government of Uttarakhand is in the midst of controversy for opening a liquor manufacturing plant in the religious township Devprayag, the main confluence point of two rivers Bhagirathi and Alaknanda in Pauri Garhwal, Uttarakhand.
Devprayag possesses tremendous spiritual and religious sanctity from these points of view, especially, it being the main confluence area of two pious rivers emanating from Gangotri glaciers and finally forming the pious Ganges.
Uttarakhand is the abode of Gods having four most sacred ancient shrines viz Gangotri, Yamunotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath, and Devprayag town being the central point which gives passage to tourists and pilgrims from all over the country. Visiting these four important religious shrines hold tremendous spiritual and religious sanctity. The people feel that the opening of the liquor factory will vitiate the holy environment of this peaceful spiritual township.
The government of Uttarakhand has opened a liquor factory here producing its own liquor brand called Hill Top to be supplied to all the official liquor vends in the entire state to earn handsome revenue as the state’s financial deficit is growing by the day having crossed 45000 crores by now which was merely 6000 crores or less when the state was formed.
There is strong opposition by the local populace to the opening of the liquor factory of this domestic brand at the Deprayag religious township, which will otherwise vitiate its otherwise pious tranquil environment.
It has been learned that after the Hill Top whiskey brand being produced by the Devprayag liquor plant is now also available in the market. The controversy has further aggravated as the opposition and protests in media continue to grow.
People are questioning the credibility and integrity of the government which majorly believes in the Hindu way of life.
Therefore the emphasis on selling liquor on a massive scale to bridge its financial deficit than banking on other alternative mediums like through the promotion of tourism, improving the condition of agriculture, encouraging industrialization, etc is not in sync with their ideology.
The government is emphasizing on liquor sale in the state on a wide scale to generate maximum revenue irrespective of the fact that hundreds of thousands of poor families will get affected, liquor addicts will die of liver-related diseases due to excessive liquor consumption and the socio-cultural structure and fabric of the society will be wrecked.
Even the Uttarakhand BJP chief and a newly elected member of parliament from Nainital Ajay Bhatt has expressed his reservation on the opening of the liquor plant in Devprayag. He has questioned that while in the opposition the entire BJP had opposed the Denis brand allegedly introduced by the then Congress government at the cost of another prestigious brand, then how can our government do the same while in power?
Ajay Bhatt stated he does not know as to when this liquor plant was opened. The idea would have been to give employment to the locals. Even then he will take up this issue with the chief minister Trivendra Rawat in this context.
It may be recalled that the government of Uttarakhand’s excise department considers the widespread selling of liquor in the hills as its main and major source of income as it generates Rs. 2300 crores annually through massive liquor sales.
The BJP government of Uttarakhand had been extremely liberal in selling liquor in Uttarakhand as it considers it to be as a big revenue source of more than 2 thousand crores annually.
Liquor was also supplied through the mobile vans in the interiors where protests led to the closure of authorized liquor shops.
The government has allowed the sale of liquor even in grocery shops having an annual turnover of Rs. 50 lakhs.
The licence fee has been fixed at Rs. 5 lakhs to procure the liquor licence for the grocery shops.
Even in twenty room capacity hotels with Rs. five lakh licence fee, liquor shops have been allowed by the excise department.
According to the website of the excise department, the Excise department of Uttarakhand is the second largest revenue contributor to the state government.
As per its website, the department has the challenging objective of automating the alcohol supply chain management system in the whole of Uttarakhand in real time and also to increase the revenue collection of the department.
As per sources, the liquor vendors charge 10 to 20 rupees extra on every single sale without even receipts and the quality of the majority of these brands are allegedly below standard as compared to the liquor of Delhi.
English
Afrikaans
Albanian
Amharic
Arabic
Armenian
Azerbaijani
Basque
Belarusian
Bengali
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Catalan
Cebuano
Chichewa
Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditional)
Corsican
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Esperanto
Estonian
Filipino
Finnish
French
Frisian
Galician
Georgian
German
Greek
Gujarati
Haitian Creole
Hausa
Hawaiian
Hebrew
Hindi
Hmong
Hungarian
Icelandic
Igbo
Indonesian
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Javanese
Kannada
Kazakh
Khmer
Korean
Kurdish (Kurmanji)
Kyrgyz
Lao
Latin
Latvian
Lithuanian
Luxembourgish
Macedonian
Malagasy
Malay
Malayalam
Maltese
Maori
Marathi
Mongolian
Myanmar (Burmese)
Nepali
Norwegian
Pashto
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Punjabi
Romanian
Russian
Samoan
Scottish Gaelic
Serbian
Sesotho
Shona
Sindhi
Sinhala
Slovak
Slovenian
Somali
Spanish
Sudanese
Swahili
Swedish
Tajik
Tamil
Telugu
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Urdu
Uzbek
Vietnamese
Welsh
Xhosa
Yiddish
Yoruba
Zulu
