Five more bar hotels get licence, 600 in Kerala now

KP Saikiran | TNN | Apr 22, 2020, 10:58 IST

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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With five more bar hotels added to the list in March alone, the number of bar hotels in the state has touched 600 at the closure of the last financial year.
Though the six new applicants for bar licence (FL-3) had been cleared by the government as early as the last week of February, the applicants had been delaying the payment, awaiting for the fresh financial year to begin.
But as per section 14A of the foreign liquor rules, any person for whom an FL-3 licence has been issued should remit the full annual fee for the financial year in which the licence has been issued, failing to which no fresh licence will be issued for the next year.
The five FL-3 licences in March were granted to two hotels each in Wayanad and Malappuram and one in Thrissur. These include Hotel Luxora in Malappuram, for which the government order sanctioning the licence by the taxes department was issued on February 25, Panattu Regency in Thrissur, for which the order sanctioning the licence was issued on March 10, Jet Park and Emperor (both in Sulthan Bathery, Wayanad) and Rouba Residency in Ponnani, Malappuram, for which the order sanctioning the licence was issued on March 12. One more FL-3 licence was granted towards the end of February, for Hotel Horizon in Taliparamba, Kannur, for which the licence was received by February 26.
Interestingly, all these hotels had to pay Rs 28 lakh as licence fee even though the validity of their licence would expire on March 31, because of the stringent condition in the rule 14A of the foreign liquor rules, even though none of them could function under the licence as the bar hotels had to be closed down as part of the lockdown.
The lockdown had come into force by the time their licences were issued by the excise department based on the government orders, some of them as late as on March 28 and 30, just a day before the financial year ended. “Once the lockdown is over and the bar hotels are allowed to function, they will have to remit Rs 30 lakh for getting their licences renewed,” excise department sources said. As part of the new excise policy for 2020-21, the government had increased the licence fee for bar hotels from Rs 28 to 30 lakh.
On Tuesday, Congress leader V M Sudheeran wrote a letter to the chief minister, asking him to withdraw licences granted to new bar hotels.