India: ‘Booze back on 70% of India’s highways’ (Excerpt)
By Neha Sharma| TNN
April 22, 2018
CHANDIGARH: In the past year, almost 70% of the national and state highways across the country have been exempted from the Supreme Court’s order banning liquor shops within 500 metres of the stretches. If anything, the shops have returned with a vengeance, according to road safety activist Harman Sidhu, whose PIL led to the highway liquor ban.
“I am even more disappointed that Chandigarh, my home, took the lead in these exemptions,” says Sidhu who started NGO Arrive Safe more than 20 years ago after a road accident in the Morni Hills left him paralysed from the waist down. “It is unfortunate that Chandigarh showed the country how the order can be circumvented and defeated,” Sidhu added.
He adds, “Under the present scheme of things, most highways either come under municipal corporations, municipal councils or gram panchayats, which have been given exemption. The result is that liquor vends have mushroomed more than ever before on them. I wonder where the Supreme Court order is actually being implemented today.”
The Supreme Court had on March 31 ordered liquor vends within 500 metres of national and state highways to shut down from April 1. The top court had later clarified its stand and said that the restriction would not apply to highways within city limits.
Some of the biggest hotels and pubs in Chandigarh were on arterial roads that had been defined as highways for technical reasons, forcing many of the most popular watering holes of the city to shut shop for months. Even five star hotels in the heart of the city were forced to go dry.
Today, Chandigarh has not only eased the restriction on most stretches, but the new excise policy allows wine and beer to be sold from petrol pumps. “It is as if they are promoting drunken driving,” an angry Sidhu says.
When Sidhu had first moved the Punjab and Haryana high court in 2012 for the highway liquor ban, he had a simple objective – that people should not die on the roads because of drunken driving. “I wanted that there should be no availability of liquor on highways and this happened with the court order. But it was followed by a series of denotifications and change of nomenclature of roads. The liquor lobby convinced politicians to find a way around the ban. Different state governments have done everything to circumvent the court order.”
He is now pinning his hopes on the Punjab and Haryana high court which has directed the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) not to allow any liquor vend to open along highways without its permission.
NHAI officials too feel that liquor vends have reopened and seem to be in larger numbers. VK Sharma project director for NHAI at Ambala said, “I have written a letter to the government officials on the issue. After following the right procedure, we would deny access to liquor vends on highways if rules are not followed. We will go as per the high court orders.”