After Delhi, the excise policy of the Punjab Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government has come under attack from the opposition party Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) with a delegation of the latter, Wednesday submitting a memorandum to the Governor against the policy alleging a scam and urging upon him for CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED) probe into the same.
Led by SAD president Sukhbir Badal, the delegation which comprised senior party leaders, alleged in the memorandum that the Bhawant Mann-led AAP government's "revamped excise policy in the state'' was akin to the Delhi policy and that the same modus operandi was used to give control of the liquor trade to henchmen in return for kickbacks running into hundreds of crores of rupees.
The SAD delegation met Punjab Governor Banwarilal Purohit and handed over a memorandum stating that the chief minister and excise minister of Punjab had violated the provisions of the 'Official Secrecy Act' by making official files of the state available to Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and MP Raghav Chadha besides private persons.
It also alleged that the Delhi chief secretary had in his report stated that the Delhi excise policy was a quid pro quo arrangement at the top level. It further alleged that since the Punjab policy was a copy of the Delhi one, the role of the Delhi deputy chief minister, Raghav Chadha and the Punjab excise minister, and other private persons, should be probed.
The SAD president held that like in the case of Delhi, the same set of conditions were introduced to oust Punjab liquor traders from the race by introducing a clause that the L-1 licensee should not be a manufacturer anywhere in India and abroad.
The new liquor policy also stipulated that L-1 licensees should have a turnover of at least Rs 30 crore per annum and that the licensees should not have a stake in the retail market in Punjab, Sukhbir Badal alleged adding the guaranteed profit margin was also increased from 5 per cent to 10 per cent.
The delegation alleged that accordingly 80 per cent of the liquor trade in the state was handed over to a few while wine contractors holding L-2 licenses were prohibited from participating in the allotment procedure of L-1 wholesale vends which was against the provisions of the Punjab Excise Act, 1914, and Punjab Liquor License Rules, 1956.
The memorandum urged the governor to order direct the probe agencies to preserve the CCTV videos of the locations where the meetings were held along with the mobile tower locations of all the persons who participated in the meetings so that they could be asked to relate what they were doing at that very point of time.
It also requested that lie detector and narco-analysis tests be conducted on all the accused persons regarding the contents of the meetings and framing of the new excise policy.
