Excise department’s 'hasty granting' of bar licenses wrong-foots UDF government

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Keralam Excise Minister M. Liju. File | Photo Credit: The Hindu

 The Keralam Excise Department’s “hasty” reclassification of wine and beer parlours as bars appeared to have wrong-footed the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) government. 

The “instantaneous approvals”, including for lounge bar licences at the Cochin International Airport (CIAL), were based on rules laid down by the previous Left Democratic Front (LDF) government. 

Discomfitingly for the government, the contentious granting of licences, which reportedly angered the UDF’s “prohibitionist base” comprising Christian and Muslim social organisations, occurred as the cabinet formulated the State’s liquor policy for the current 2026-27 fiscal year. 

Moreover, the LDF sought to use the controversy centring on the speedy issuance of the bar licenses, allegedly without proper vetting, to depict the UDF government as a rudderless administration oblivious to governance matters. 

Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] State secretary M.V. Govindan said the government’s insistence that Excise Minister M. Liju was unaware of the back-to-back grant of bar licenses seemed improbable and would not pass muster with civil society. He said that under the previous LDF dispensation, the minister’s approval was a prerequisite for granting bar licenses. 

CPI(M) State Secretariat member and former Excise Minister M.B. Rajesh said Mr. Liju was seeking to save face by scapegoating Excise officials who issued the licenses under existing rules.

“Mr Liju should have pre-empted the issuance of new bar licenses till the UDF finalised its liquor policy. Instead, the government used the hiatus to grant licenses to influential entities”, he said. 

Mr. Rajesh also accused Mr. Biju of “all bluster and no action”. He said the Minister’s promise that he would cancel the licenses of bars which served liquor to an underage teen indicted in the drunken driving accident that claimed three lives in Nedumbassery was yet to materialise. 

Mr. Liju told The Hindu that the Excise Department order did not catch the government off guard. “Instead, we realised that there is no system that automatically refers such key decisions to the Minister. The LDF had dismantled the checks and balances, empowering Deputy Commissioners to grant FL-3 (Bar) licenses to all and sundry behind the political executive’s back”, he said. 

Mr. Liju said the government has taken a serious view of the faux pas. “On the face of it, the Excise officials acted as per existing rules. But the administration should have shown propriety by consulting the Minister. We are investigating how licenses of bars defunct for 12 years were renewed”, he added. 

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