Nearly one lakh applications received for TG liquor shops

Hyderabad: Friday, the last day for the submission of applications to open new liquor shops for two years --2025- 2027 – saw huge response from aspiring liquor traders. Officials of the Telangana Prohibition and Excise Department said that nearly one lakh applications had been received for 2,620 liquor shops on offer across the state. The government is likely to get Rs 3,000 crore from the sale of the applications.

Although the application fee had been increased to Rs 3 lakh, officials said, liquor traders bought applications in huge numbers over the last one week and they were busy submitting them to the department on the last day, which is considered auspicious.

Officials said that 50,000 applications have already been submitted and another 40,000 applications were in the process of being submitted.

The total number of the applications submitted to the Excise Department would be known late in the night.

Initially, the sale of applications for new licenced liquor shops received a lukewarm response from liquor traders. Not more than 2,000 applications were sold till October 13 in view of what the traders perceived as “inauspicious days”.

In the last auction, a total of 98,900 applications were sold.

The previous BRS government earned a whooping Rs 2,600 crore from the sale of applications alone. After the increase of the application fee, the Excise wing is expecting to generate more than Rs 3,000 crore.

State Excise Commissioner Hari Kiran said that all the district Excise Superintendents had been asked to organize meetings with local liquor traders to boost the sale of the applications, due to which the response was overwhelming over the last 2 weeks.

It is expected that a huge number of applications were sold in some districts – old Khammam, Nalgonda and Warangal.