Acute shortage of IMFL in Kangra

Ravinder Sood

PALAMPUR, July 11

Most of wine shops in Kangra district and its adjoining areas will go dry in the next couple of days if the state government failed to provide the supplies of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) to these vends.

Recently, the state government took over the wholesale business of IMFL in the state by setting up a corporation for its supply to the retail vendors.

Earlier the sale of IMFL was in the hands of private contractor through 67 wholesale outlets in the state. On June 4, 2016, the state government through a notification asked all the wholesalers to surrender their licences as the government proposed to take over the wholesale business of liquor in the state.

Later the wholesale contractors moved to the Himachal Pradesh High Court challenging the notification of the state government but the state high court dismissed their writ petition. Now the matter was pending in the Supreme Court.

Onkar Chand Rana, who was a wholesale licensee at Palampur, said that the main reason for the shortage of English liquor was non-availability of stocks in the warehouse set up by the state government at Nagrota Bagwan which was yet to receive the supplies of the IMFL.

He said the state government hurriedly sealed all the 67 wholesale depot of the IMFL on July 1 and imposed ban on the sale of liquor despite the fact that huge stocks were lying with the wholesalers all over the state. He said 80 per cent retail liquor vends had no stocks today. If early stocks were not made available, they would suffer losses in crores.

Rana said season of marriage was in full swing but the state government was least concerned with the acute shortage of the IMFL. However, a senior official of the state government, when contacted by The Tribune, said these were the teething troubles and in the next one month system would be on the track and there would be no shortage of the IMFL in the state.