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Wine dealers fleece tipplers, make 45 lakh per day!
Wine shop dealers in the district care a hoot for the rules, selling above MRP they are fleecing tipplers and in doing so they are pocketing a whopping Rs 45 lakh per day. It should be recalled that Minister for Prohibition and Excise Kollu Ravindra warned the excise officials that stringent action would be taken against them, if the retail wine shops sold liquor above MRP.
Visakhapatnam: Wine shop dealers in the district care a hoot for the rules, selling above MRP they are fleecing tipplers and in doing so they are pocketing a whopping Rs 45 lakh per day. It should be recalled that Minister for Prohibition and Excise Kollu Ravindra warned the excise officials that stringent action would be taken against them, if the retail wine shops sold liquor above MRP.
The Minister’s caution was thrown to winds and each and every shop in the district has been collecting Rs 10 to Rs 15 above the MRP for every bottle of liquor since the beginning of the excise year in July last year. There are 65 retail shops in city and 367 in the district.
Shops in the city sell 76,000 bottles per day making a cool Rs 7.6 lakh per day charging above MRP, and taking a cue from the wine shop owners in the city, shops in the rural and Agency even started charging Rs 10 - Rs15 above the MRP for each bottle.
According to excise officials, the department hasn’t received a single complaint in the current excise year. The State government made it mandatory for all retailers to install computers, printers and scanners to generate bills in accordance with the barcode.
Under this system, the centralised server located in the commissioner’s office can monitor the sales. Though most of the shops have installed the equipment but none of them issue a bill nor the buyer asked for one. “There is a technical problem with the server and the wine shop owners are taking advantage of it,” a senior official of the department said.
Meanwhile, the shop owners are defending selling above MRP. “We have paid Rs 65 lakh towards license fee and also a whopping rent for hiring a retail outlet in city limits. Without charging extra buck, we cannot even break even. Moreover, we have to pay bribes to excise department, police, municipal officials and even the labour department,” said a city dealer requesting anonymity.
City excise superintendent V Sudheer said that his department was keeping a close eye on the shops. “During last month, cases were booked against four shops under section 41 of AP Excise Act and violation of license conditions. A fine of Rs 1 lakh was slapped on each shop and their licenses were suspended for a week,”he added. He welcomed complaints from public, if the shops charged more than MRP rates.
Charging more than the MRP and subsequent generation of income might lead to formation of liquor syndicates, which
disappeared after ACB filed cases against the syndicate leaders in 2014.
