The Maharashtra Cabinet on Monday approved a proposal to make it mandatory for all liquor companies to use polyester-based holograms on their bottles to prevent counterfeiting.
The Maharashtra Cabinet on Monday approved a proposal to make it mandatory for all liquor companies to use polyester-based holograms on their bottles to prevent counterfeiting. The move will help not only the excise department to increase state revenue, but also the common man, who can check these holograms by using a cellphone application. The holograms will also incorporate a track-and-trace facility which will provide information about a bottle’s place and date of manufacturing .
According to minister for excise Eknath Khadse, the new mechanism will help the state government earn an additional revenue of Rs 3,000 crore per year.
In order to know if the liquor bottle is genuine or fake, all one will need is a barcode scan from a cellphone. The decision was taken at a meeting of the state Cabinet on Monday, chaired by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis.
To root out the menace of spurious liquor, the state excise department proposed to make it mandatory for all liquor bottles to carry a hologram and barcode with embedded covert and overt features.
This will enable a “track and trace mechanism”, which will follow the journey of the bottle from the manufacturer to the final point of sale and also reveal its authenticity to consumers and officials, an official said.
Meanwhile, giving details of the holograms, Mr Khadse said that the government is developing a free of cost cellphone app which, when brought in contact with the hologram, will immediately generate a green or red mark indicating to the buyer whether the liquor, wine, country-made liquor, Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) is fake or genuine. “If one holds the liquor bottle against the cellphone application one will get a green tick mark indicating that it is a genuine product or a red tick mark indicating that it is not genuine product,” said Mr Khadse.
He added said that the state has earned excise duty worth about Rs 18,000 crore, inclusive of VAT from liquor sales. He added that the decision approved by the state Cabinet would enable the state to mop up an additional revenue of Rs 3,000 crore.
“The decision to paste holograms on all kinds of liquor and wines was taken as prices of liquor in neighbouring states like Goa were cheaper, which was leading to import of cheap liquor leading to a loss of revenue for the state,” Mr Khadse said. He further added that there are 159 liquor manufacturers in the state and 21 states are already using the hologram technology. States like Tamil Nadu have been using it since 1998.
Mr Khadse said that henceforth no liquor bottles in state will be allowed to be sold without a hologram. The government will not incur a single rupee of expenditure for the move.
He further said that the decision shall be implemented either from July 1 or August 1. “The decision was taken keeping in mind the recent tragedy at Malvani where about 100 people died after consuming spurious liquor,” he said.
According to the new decision, the retailers will have to stock special lenses so that consumers can read the covert security features on the hologram, invisible to the naked eye, and thus verify the brew’s authenticity. The hologram cannot be replicated or reused and will also reveal if the liquor is duty-evaded or smuggled.
Scanning the barcode will enable consumers to know when and where the liquor was manufactured and when it was sent from the distillery to the wholesaler and further to the retailer and if it is an original or a fake.
