PANAJI:
Referring to the opinion of the Advocate General that the ban applied only to liquor vends and not to restaurants that served liquor as well as the fact that bypasses would be considered as highways, Parsekar said that several establishments could be ‘saved’.
“The information we have on date indicates that there are almost 3,000 vends to be affected Of these, almost 50% of those are restaurants. If the AG’s interpretation of orders are followed, as he has told me, 50% will be saved. The numbers will reduce to around 1470. It is up to the new government to implement it,” Parsekar said.
Parsekar also said that an
other option to reduce the number of those affected is to denotify those roads passing through towns which have been bypassed.
“Highways which go through towns, in many cases, many of them have been bypassed. If the road going through the town is denotified, and the bypass is considered, more establishments will be protected,” Parsekar said citing the example of Mapusa as well as of the Panaji-Old Goa bypass road.
Parsekar, however, said that it would not be proper for the Government to file a review petition in the Supreme Court but better if the State lent its support to the liquor traders who so wish to file a review.
“What I advised them (liquor sellers) is that they are stakeholders, they need to challenge the orders in the court as is the case in nine to ten other states. The government should not do it. It would not be appropriate. It is a little inappropriate for the Government to claim that it wants to increase the bars,” Parsekar said.
“Once they have filed a review, we can be party to it and the government can file its say in the matter and we can initiate action in such a way that it is beneficial to them,” Parsekar said.
Earlier Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar said that the State government was “fully behind” the liquor traders especially in light of the fact that Goa is a tourism state and a small state.
