Kasaragod: Last November, Madhavan Nair P rented out his nine-room 2,700 sq ft commercial building to Kerala State Cooperative Consumers Federation (ConsumerFed) to sell Indian-made foreign liquor (IMFL) in Kasaragod's Cheruvathur town. Nine months on, he has put up the building on the block, thanks to the CPM-led state government's "unwritten pact" with bar owners to not allow retail liquor outlets near bars, a policy implemented only for selected bar owners. CPM forced ConsumerFed, the retail chain under the Department of Cooperation, to shut the outlet after one day of business on November 23.

After ConsumerFed exited Cheruvathur, Kerala State Beverages Corporation (Bevco) — the only other government company authorised to sell IMFL in Kerala — reportedly expressed interest in Madhavan Nair's building. "I gave my written consent to Bevco one month and a half ago. But they have not got back to me yet," he said. "My losses are mounting with every passing day and I'm not in a position to hold on to the building. I am putting it up for sale," he told Onmanorama. Madhavan Nair has suffered a loss of Rs 14 lakh till August because he went out of his way to support a government venture.

He said that the CPM's District and Area Committees have softened their stance on reopening the liquor outlet in Cheruvathur but the State Committee is still not yielding. "Bevco officials told me that they cannot move in without the consent of the CPM State Committee," the building owner said.

In contrast to other towns and villages where liquor outlets face resistance from civil societies, in Cheruvathur, headload workers, auto drivers, and shop owners wanted ConsumerFed’s liquor outlet to run in their town. The CPM publicly faced intense backlash from its own party workers in Cheruvathur because of its policy of prioritising a bar business over the town's economy. They were furious because ConsumerFed's outlet did a whopping business of Rs 9.42 lakh on November 23, its first and last day in Cheruvathur. Officials said it was a soft launch without any publicity.

The supporters put up banners before the shuttered building of Madhavan Nair, ridiculing and abusing the party policy and accusing some leaders of accepting bribes from the bar owners.

To be sure, CPM state chief M V Govindan told Onmanorama in January that he as the Minister for Excise had held talks with bar owners and struck an unwritten understanding not to allow retail liquor outlets near bars to protect their investment. The nearest retail outlet to the Cheruvathur bar is 15km away in Nileshwar.

Back then, the district leadership too endorsed Govindan's stance. In an explanatory meet, the party's District Secretary M V Balakrishnan said he was pained by banners and called the protesting party supporters "misguided youths".

If the district leadership now has a change of heart, it is due to the drubbing Balakrishnan received in the Lok Sabha election in Kasaragod during the summer of 2024. He could be making amends because he is hoping to contest the 2026 Assembly election from the Trikaripur constituency, a seat where the CPM has never lost.

In the parliament election, Balakrishnan lost to Congress's Rajmohan Unnithan by a margin of 1,00,649 votes, a rare feat for a CPM leader. In 2019, Unnithan's victory margin against CPM's former district secretary and former Trikaripur MLA KP Satheesh Chandran was less than half at 40,439 votes.

Of the seven assembly segments that make up Kasaragod Lok Sabha constituency, Balakrishnan suffered the biggest setback in Trikaripur, which includes Cheruvathur grama panchayat. (Twelve of the 17 wards in Cheruvathur are controlled by the CPM.) The Congress had a lead of 10,448 votes against the CPM in Trikaripur in the Lok Sabha election. This is the same segment where CPM's M Rajagopalan won by 26,137 votes in the 2021 Assembly election. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, when Unnithan posted a surprise win, the LDF managed a lead of 1,889 votes in Trikaripur.

In the run-up to the election, several party supporters in Cheruvathur told Onmanorama that they would teach the party leadership a lesson if it did not revert the decision to shut ConsumerFed's outlet.

It appears that the district leadership has learned the lesson. When Onmanorama contacted the CPM District leadership to enquire whether Bevco's outlet would be allowed in Cheruvathur, a top leader said he would not intervene again in the Cheruvathur liquor outlet issue. "Whether it comes or not, I will not intervene," he said.

But Madhavan Nair said that it mattered to him because his investment was on the line. The rent for the nine rooms was Rs 90,000 per month, which he is not getting for the past four months. When ConsumerFed zeroed in on his building in November 2023, the space was used as a TVS Motor two-wheeler showroom. Madhavan Nair gave Rs 10 lakh as compensation to the TVS franchise because it had invested a lot in the interior, and ConsumerFed wanted the building on short notice. He spent another Rs 40,000 on earthwork to prepare the backyard of the building. ConsumerFed moved in without a rent agreement or paying the security deposit.

However, ConsumerFed paid rent for six months because protesters prevented it from taking away the liquor stock, he said. Since May, he's not getting any rent and Bevco's indecision is pushing him into debt, Madhavan Nair said. His losses had mounted to Rs 14 lakh by August, forcing him to look for a buyer for the building.

Now ConsumerFed is looking to open the outlet in Cheemeni panchayat, another party bastion 10km from the bar in Cheruvathur. But the civil society in Cheemeni is up in arms against the move. On August 1, it organised a day-long protest meeting in the town. Speaking at the protest meet, Adv Kuttamath Gangadharan, who debuted as an actor in the film 'Nna, Thaan Case Kodu' (2022), criticised the government for making grand announcements for Cheemeni, such as an IT park, but instead planning to deliver a liquor shop.

Earlier, when ConsumerFed attempted to relocate the outlet to Achamthuruthi, an island on the Tejaswini River in Cheruvathur panchayat, a Congress-led protest nipped the plan.

Madhavan found the entire exercise absurd. "I don't get it. Cheruvathur wants the outlet but they’re taking it away and forcing it on places where people don’t want it," he said.