Chandigarh: Only 51 bids received for 97 liquor vends

In a repeat from last fiscal, the UT excise and taxation department has received bids for only 51 of the total 97 vends available for allotment under the 2024-25 Excise Policy.
This, despite rolling out a slew of relaxations for liquor contractors, including lower reserve prices, to attract more takers.
Having failed to allot 18 of city’s 95 liquor vends, the UT excise and taxation department failed to meet the revenue target of ₹830 crore by nearly ₹150 crore in financial year 2023-24.
Wednesday was the last day to submit the bids, which will be opened on Thursday for allotment.
Darshan Singh Kler, president of the Wine Contractors’ Association, said the low number of bids was the result of high excise duty and VAT, due to which vendors had already suffered huge losses in the past two years. “We asked the department to lower the excise duty and VAT, but they paid no heed. So, it will suffer losses in the upcoming fiscal as well,” he added.
Additional excise and taxation commissioner-cum-collector Pradhuman Singh, meanwhile, said the response was satisfactory for the first round, expressing confidence that all vends will be sold.
At seven, the maximum bids were received for a liquor vend at the Sector 36 market, followed by five bids for the liquor vend at Manimajra, near Railway light point. The liquor vend in Dhanas, which remained unsold last year, received two bids this time. In 2023-24, its reserve price was fixed at ₹11.53 crore, which has been brought down to ₹8.32 crore for 2024-25. Before 2023, the vend had received the highest bids for three consecutive years.
For the financial year 2024-25, the department has decided to give 84 licences and increase the number of vends from 95 to 97. The total reserve price of all these vends has been fixed at ₹452.29 crore. Even after increasing the number of vends by two, the reserve price has been reduced by ₹33.83 crore compared to the previous fiscal.
For the first time, UT has also decided that any liquor vend remaining unsold will be run by the Chandigarh Industrial and Tourism Development Corporation Limited (CITCO).