Statesman News Service
MALDA, 29 JULY: The superintendent of the excise department in Malda has started a rationing system for the distribution of country spirit (CS) to authorised sellers to overcome the ongoing crisis regarding rectified spirit which has hampered the production of country liquor across the state since the third week of July.
A total of 43 authorised country spirit sellers in Malda district have decided to open their CS shops for only a few hours to avoid any untoward incident if they fail to meet the demands of the people.
Some of them have decided to shut down their shop due to inadequate stock.
Some retail CS shop owners in South Dinajpur have sought police protection before the sale of country liquor as they have been facing trouble from local hawkers who are demanding more than their allotment.
“I have prepared a list of allotment for the authorised CS sellers, based on their CS selling records from last year, so that no one is ‘deprived’ during this crisis," said Mr TK Mohanta, superintendent of excise in Malda.
The bottling house located at Narayanpur in Malda is delivering country spirits according to the list made by the superintendent of excise.
The superintendent has prepared the list of allotment based on the stock of rectified spirit collected by the local authorised manufacturing unit from the distillery house IFB, the only one in Bengal.
The bottler had managed only two tankers of rectified spirit from the IFB on 21 and 23 July and has been able to produce more than 2.2 lakh bottles of country spirit for Malda and South Dinajpur.
The production of CS would stop tomorrow.
But if the Malda bottler gets another tanker of rectified spirit tomorrow, it would be able to start production, not immediately but after a 48 hour gap due to technical reasons.
The superintendent of excise Mr Mohanta said: “We hope that the crisis will be overcome in the first week of August. The bottlers will be getting rectified
spirit from Uttar Pradesh. Some bottlers have already started the loading of rectified spirit in UP.”
The superintendent of excise has also asked the license holders to sell first to customers
coming to consume liquor at the shop.
“Unofficial hawkers will not be allowed to procure bottles in bulk during this time, as this would deprive local consumers,” he added.
There is a long queue before the retail counter of country spirit located at Tulsihata in Harishchandrapur and Mathurapur in Manikchak block in Malda.
Some hawkers have been disappointed, having failed to procure stock as the authorised counters had shut down.
A few hawkers paid in advance but still failed to procure the CS bottles for sale at unauthorised counters.
The district secretary of the CS Licensee Association, Mr Saikat De, said: “Consumers will beat us up if we fail to supply them all. To avoid awkward situations we have decided to open our shop for only one hour a day.”
He added: “We are facing problems in meeting only 50 per cent of their requirement."
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