It is 84 years since the Tamil Nadu Prohibition Act, 1937, was enacted. Yet, prohibition, as on date, is not a reality. On the contrary, the sale of liquor by the government, through 5,358 retail outlets, has turned out to be the most lucrative source of revenue, the Madras High Court has lamented.
Justice Anita Sumanth expressed her anguish while quashing a tender notification issued by Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (Tasmac) on August 2, 2022, inviting bids for selling eatables at the bars attached to its retail liquor shops and also to collect empty liquor bottles from there.
The judge held that the tender conditions imposed by Tasmac, which holds the exclusive privilege, “if one may call it so,” for wholesale as well as retail sale of liquor in the State, would only lead to undesirable practices and corruption and therefore, the government could not facilitate such a process.
She pointed out that Tasmac was in the practice of taking on rent only the space required for retail shops and not the bars though it insists that the latter be established right adjacent to those shops. It was the successful bidders for selling eatables who had to take on rent the space required for bars.
According to the tender conditions, the bidders must disclose whether they had obtained consent from the land-owner for establishing the bars. However, they need not submit a copy of the written consent. After the highest bidder gets selected, he/she should enter into a rental agreement within seven days.
If the bidder fails to enter into such an agreement with the land-owner, the next highest bidder would be given an opportunity to get into such an agreement provided he/she matches the bid amount quoted by the first highest bidder. Such conditions would lead to confusion and corruption, the judge held.
She ordered that henceforth, Tasmac itself should obtain No Objection Certificates from the owners of land, adjacent to the liquor shops, for establishing the bars. Such NOCs should be obtained even before calling for tenders to sell eatables and collect empty bottles from those bars.
“It is, however, necessary that the land-owner also consent to a particular person participating in the running of the bar/collection of bottles/sale of eatables. Such consent must also be obtained from the owner at the commencement of the tender process. How such consent is to be obtained is best left to be decided by the State and Tasmac,” she added.
The judge also quashed certain clauses of Tasmac’s July 22, 2014 circular on the basis of which the tender conditions had been framed. She recalled that Justice V. Bharathidasan (since retired) had taken a view similar to hers while dealing with a batch of cases filed in the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court in 2018.
He, too, had ruled that Tasmac should obtain NOCs from the land-owners for establishing bars. “Therefore, all tenders from March 28, 2018 to till date requiring the bidders to obtain NOC are directly contrary to the decision of this court and the State is seen to be in contempt of the order dated March 28, 2018,” she wrote.
