Kerala’s Opposition Leader V.D. Satheesan (file)
| Photo Credit: K Ragesh
Kerala’s Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan on Thursday (January 16, 2025) said he suspected that “corruption” motivated the Cabinet to allow a global liquor major to establish manufacturing units in Palakkad district.
In a statement here, Mr. Satheesan said that Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting had “surreptitiously” awarded Oasis Commercial Private Limited sanction to set up an ethanol plant, multi-feed distillation unit, Indian-made foreign liquor (IMFL) liquor bottling facility, and brandy/winery unit in the district.
He termed the “behind-the-scenes and unilateral” award as “norm-breaking” and contravening existing rules. Mr. Satheesan said corruption had motivated the government to favour a particular firm for the multi-crore venture.
Seeks criteria disclosure
Mr. Satheesan demanded that the government publicly disclose the criteria for awarding such permits to private liquor firms and why it selected a single company without inviting expressions of intent from other competing firms.
Mr. Satheesan said the government’s decision was a significant break from the State’s Excise policy, executed in a “suspiciously furtive manner”. He said successive governments had desisted from permitting the set-up of liquor manufacturing in the State for socio-economic and environmental reasons.
He said Kerala’s liquor policy precluded administrations from according licences to alcohol manufacturing units in the State post-1999.
Despite Opposition support, Mr. Satheesan said the LDF had failed to give brewery licences to private players in 2018.
He said the government wilfully kept the Opposition and the public in the dark about the “radical change” in liquor policy.
Impact on groundwater
He noted that Palakkad was parched, and the government permit would allow the liquor company to harvest groundwater exploitatively, imperilling the environment and endangering the water needs and livelihood of families, including farmers.
Mr. Satheesan said the people of Palakkad had struggled for years to evict a soft drink company whose industrial-scale operations perilously lowered the district’s groundwater level.
A senior Excise official told The Hindu that the government had amended the liquor policy in 2022 to allow private firms to set up liquor manufacturing units in the State, given that the bulk of the liquor retailed in Kerala was imported from other regions. Moreover, the government stood to earn substantial revenue from such firms, which export their products to different countries and areas in the State.
Published – January 16, 2025 01:44 pm IST
