Kerala court comes to the rescue of Congress chief

The Kerala high court has come to the rescue of state Congress chief V M Sudheeran, who came under attack from government and the party for his bold stand against renewing licenses of liquor bars closed three weeks ago due to lack of mandatory standard by rejecting pleas of owners of such bars to renew the licenses.

Justice Chidambaresh, who heard the petitions filed by owners of 54 bars after Justice C T Ravikumar recused himself from passing orders on the petitions, said there was need to give importance to measures for checking availability of liquor in the state where even children can easily get booze.

Ravi Kumar, who had reserved the order after hearing the petitions, withdrew from passing the order after a lawyer allegedly attempted to influence him. The judge said advocate K Thavamani had met him at his residence and attempted to discuss the issue. The high court bar council has sought an explanation from the lawyer.

The bar owners had sought an interim order to renew the licenses of 418 bars that were closed following refusal by the government to renew them after the expiry of the license on March 31, 2013, citing a report of the Comptroller and Auditor General over the pathetic condition of the bars.

However, the government sought to review its decision after the Lok Sabha election. Sudheeran, who has been consistently fighting against the liquor mafia, resisted the move almost single handedly. Two meetings of the government-party coordination committee held on Wednesday could not thrash out the differences, prompting attack on him from ministers and senior leaders. While Excise Minister K Babu warned him against imposing his writ on the government, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy accused him of deliberately trying to project himself as a crusader against the liquor lobby and others as those favouring them.

Sudheeran stood his ground saying that he was only standing by the stand of the party to implement prohibition phase by phase. He said this could be achieved only by reducing the availability of liquor. A K Antony had initiated the process in 1996 by banning the production and sale of country liquor called arrack.

The government has been under pressure from prohibitions, especially the Church, to carry forward the process by bringing down the liquor outlets. The anti-liquor wing of the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council (KCBC) says the liquor consumption in Kerala has been rising steadily because of the failure of the government to check the availability.

According to the Economic Survey Review, liquor consumption in the state was more than 1.76 gallons per person. Liquor sales touched an all-time high at Rs88.4 billion in the fiscal 2012-13. The sales during the last fiscal were Rs78.6 billion.

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• India