Poll season boosts liquor sales

The Excise Department?s revenue has been increasing ever since campaigning began. The sale is even higher than what is usually witnessed during festival season and New Year's eve.

Published on: Nov 27, 2003, 12:01:00 IST

PTI | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Liquor has been flowing free ever since the netas hit the road seeking votes. So much so that liquor sales have gone up by about 55 per cent this elections.

The Excise Department’s revenue has been increasing ever since campaigning began. The sale is even higher than what is usually witnessed during festival season and New Year's eve.

Excise revenue started picking up in the first week of November when candidates were canvassing for tickets and running a low-profile campaign.

A major jump in revenue came after November 18 when campaign was launched in full swing.

Country-made liquor has generated more revenue than Indian-made foreign liquor (IMLF). The constituencies where liquor sales have shot up are the parliamentary constituencies of East and Outer Delhi.

Excise department officials are expecting higher revenue gain in the last few days of campaigning.

"Most of the dealers have increased their demand by 80 to 90 per cent expecting a huge rush," an official said.

The next three days will be hectic at liquor shops as people rush to stock up for Sunday and Monday — dry days for elections.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.