Liquor sales resume in Kerala after two months

Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala government has given the nod to restart booze sales through 1,168 outlets (877 selling hard liquor and 291 selling wine and beer) in the state from May 28, which was stopped after the first phase of Coronavirus lockdown began in March.

The outlets, of Beverages Corporation and private bar hotels, will be open from 9am to 5pm. There will be no home delivery.

The BevQ app became functional after excise minister T P Ramakrshnan formally announced the opening of the liquor outlets on Wednesday, by around 4 pm. Booking can be made on the app from 6am to 10pm.

"The sales will be only to those who have the token and at a time only five people should be there are the outlets," he said.

The state cabinet meet held on Wednesday gave the nod for booze sales through, Beverages Corporation and Consumerfed outlets and bars.

Toddy shops had been permitted to open earlier. More toddy shops will open in the upcoming days depending on the availability of toddy, the minister said.

Bev Q, a queue management app to facilitate booze sales and avoid crowding in counters is expected to hit Google Play Store any time now.

The government has entrusted BevQ, a queue-management app on Google's Play Store, to ensure that social distancing norms are followed. The app, developed by Faircode, received Google's nod on Tuesday.

The excise minister said that the selling agency - Bevco and private bar hotels - would have to pay to the solution provider (Faircode) 50 paise for every token for cloud rent and maintenance charges. Initially, the money required for the purpose will be paid to the bar owners by the government and it would be recovered later.

In the case of feature phones, where SMS is used for booking, 15 paise would be the per token charge that would have to be paid to the solution provider.

The minister also said that Faircode was selected after a two-stage process. here were 29 proposals to begin with, which was whittled down to five. Among the five, Faircode quoted the lowest rate of Rs 2.84 lakh.

Initially, 4.8 lakh tokens will be issued a day. Through the app, users will be able to make online bookings and get virtual tokens with which liquor could be purchased from the prescribed outlets or bars at a specified time. The app will prompt you to enter your PIN code, your name and phone number. After experiencing technical snags, the app was denied Google sanction earlier.

A customer booking an e-token through the virtual queue management (VQM) system using a smart phone will get a QR code, which has to be scanned at the outlet using the registered mobile at the outlet. This is done to cancel the e-token. A smilar process will be done in the case of hose booking using SMS facility.

A customer can use the BevQ app only once in five days.

At any given time, only five people will be allowed to stand in queue in front of the outlet counter. Those standing in the queue will have to strictly adhere to social distancing norms. Sanitisers and water will also be made available in front of the outlets.

Kerala State Beverages Corporation MD G Sparjan Kumar had said the process of disinfecting the state-run outlets were being held across the state and instruction had been issued to the staff on how to deal with the customer once the shops are open. As many as 551 bars and 260 beer and wine parlours had given consent letter to state-run Beverages Corporation, to sell alcohol as takeaways.

The state government had on May 13 increased the price of liquor by 10-35 per cent to shore up its revenue as it is facing a severe financial crisis due to the COVID-19 induced lockdown.

The cabinet recommended a 10 per cent tax hike for beer and wine and 35 per cent for all other categories of liquor.

At present, the sales tax on IMFL is 202 per cent for brands priced up to Rs 400 and 212 per cent for brands above that. With the new rates, this will increase to 237 per cent and 247 per cent respectively.

Despite the high tax, Kerala has the highest per capita consumption of liquor in the country.