Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Andhra Pradesh government gets notice on belt shops

By S A Ishaqui

Hyderabad,Nov. 8: A division bench comprising Chief Justice Nisar Ahmad Kakru and Justice Vilas V. Afzulpurkar of the High Court on Monday issued notices to the state government and the prohibition and excise department based on a petition filed seeking a direction to close belt shops in the state.

The bench was dealing with a petition filed by Chaitanya Sravanthi, a nongovernment organisation represented by Dr Shrin Rahman. The petitioner brought to the notice of the court that the excise authorities were encouraging belt shops to achieve revenue targets.

The petitioner’s counsel Mr V. Raghu told the court that the illegal flow of liquor in the villages is playing havoc with the lives of people. He said that the petitioner’s organisation conducted a survey with the association of the Andhra University in Visakhapatnam area on the impact of liquor consumption by rural poor. According to the survey people in rural areas were spending their earnings through National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme to drink liquor.

He said that 99 per cent people admit that their families were ruined due to consumption of liquor by their heads and 96 per cent people admitted that it had an adverse impact on the education of their children.

The 59 per cent of those surveyed said the health of their alcoholic husband had already deteriorated. The petitioner said that the government which is collecting huge licence fee from liquor traders is responsible for this sorry state of affairs. The government was directed to file its counter affidavits in two weeks.

1 comment:

ఆర్.ఆర్. కృష్ణ కిషోర్ said...

evial affects and health hazards of drinking liquor is established well before and it is well known to all including governments
we dont understand why it is being treated along with other beverages
income levels and financial profiles and health profiles of urban and rural people vary with great degree
urbaners are well educated enough and have sound income so they can spend for costly beverages witout disturbing their economic worthiness and also most of the daytime through out the year they have work to engage so they dont drink regularly
but rural habitants are not well educated enough and also they have work to do only for few months out of a year so they easily get accustomed to drinking and spoiling their health with regular drinking habits

that too belt shops got very low revenue in rural areas because of low income profiles of rural habitants
the solution is engage them with some regular work and improve their financial stability and also we have to see no excess money is being kept with them