Highway alcohol shop ban in India

Court order is an attempt to reduce drunk driving

NEW DELHI // India’s highest court ordered the shutdown of all liquor shops along state and national motorways yesterday in an attempt to cut drunk driving in a country where road accidents kill 17 people an hour.

The supreme court directed authorities to stop granting licences to motorway liquor shops with immediate effect and said all registrations would be cancelled by the end of March next year, setting a deadline of April 1 for their closure.

“There should be no liquor vends on national and state highways,” chief justice T S Thakur said.

Mr Thakur also ordered the removal of all alcohol banners and advertisements from such routes and said any shops selling alcohol must be located at least 500 metres from motorways.

Nearly 150,000 people were killed in Indian road accidents last year – a figure that equals about 400 people a day – according to the ministry of road transport and motorways.

Of those, nearly 5 per cent – 6,755 deaths – was due to cases where the driver was under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Harman Singh Sidhu of Arrive Safe NGO, a petitioner in the case, said alcohol shops could be found every 1.5 kilometres along Indian motorways, calling them “a great temptation for road users and a distraction”. While many welcomed the court decision, liquor vendors said it would threaten their business.

“It’s a landmark judgment as far as accident cases are concerned. They might reduce. But shop owners are in difficulty now,” said V Balaji, a lawyer for the liquor traders association.

Yesterday ’ s judgment was also likely to leave a big hole in state coffers that reportedly rake in billions of rupees in alcohol taxes and fees.