Supreme Court to give verdict on Kerala liquor policy on December 29

The Supreme Court will give its verdict on December 29 on a batch of petitions from liquor bar owners, challenging a judgment of the Kerala high court upholding the state’s new liquor policy to close down all liquor bar hotels except those in the five-star classification.

A bench of Justices Vikramajit Sen and Shiva Kirti Singh had reserved the judgment on August 27 and the verdict was expected before the apex court closed for winter holidays on December 16 but the judgment could not be delivered due to the non-availability of Justice Shiv Kirti Singh, who was on leave.

As Justice Sen is due to retire on December 30, he will pronounce the judgment on December 29. With Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar also announcing his government’s decision to bring prohibition in the state in a phased manner, this judgment will have wide ramifications in other states as well.

Kerala had defended its liquor policy contending that pursuant to the high court judgment of March 31, only 24 five-star hotels in Kerala have the licence to serve Indian-made foreign liquor as the annual licence of other hotels expired on March 31. The high court had also upheld the policy allowing the 300-dd bar hotels, to be closed for the sale of liquor, to run as beer parlours.

The state said it had not made any classification of hotels at all. The policy has only prescribed the qualification to serve liquor, viz only five star hotels can do so.

It said the question of violation of Article 14 (equality before law) will arise only if the bar owners have a fundamental right to trade in liquor. It also said there was no fundamental right to get liquor licence and they get only a statutory right. It said the policy was an experiment, which may succeed or fail. But the experience so far has shown that the consumption of liquor among youth had come down.

The bench will decide whether the discrimination meted out to hotels below 5 star by denying renewal of their FL3 licenses and allowing sale and consumption of liquor in other hotels by the impugned policy and the rule is founded on intelligible differentia.