HYDERABAD: The Telangana government on Saturday lowered the licence fee for retail liquor stores in the excise policy for 2014-15 which will come into effect from July 1. In another major change, the licences will be issued through draw of lots instead of auction.

Announcing the new policy, excise and prohibition minister T Padma Rao said that perhaps in view of the high licence fee, there were no takers for 175 shops in Hyderabad last year. Overall, 292 outlets in the Telangana region did not find any takers last year. To arrest this trend, the government reduced the license fee in regions with population above 20 lakh. In such regions, the fee would be Rs 90 lakh, lesser than last year’s Rs 1.04 crore.

However, the government is keen on tapping the revenue potential in areas with population ranging from 3 to 5 lakh and from 5 to 20 lakh as it increased the fee by Rs 4 lakh over the last year’s fee. The licences would cost Rs 32 lakh for areas with population between 10,000 and 50,000, Rs 42 lakh for population between 50,000 and 3 lakh, Rs 50 lakh for areas with population between 3 and 5 lakh and Rs 68 lakh for areas with population up to 20 lakh.

The policy change is expected to fetch the government Rs 10,500 crore in revenue, an increase of 10 per cent from last year.

“The outlets will be located in the same localities identified in the previous years. The license fee in district headquarters of Karimnagar and Warangal have been increased marginally to tap the revenue potential,” Rao said, adding that there would be no changes in the operational hours of the retail liquor outlets which will continue to function between 11 am and 10 pm.

When asked about retailers flouting MRP norms, Padma Rao said stringent action would be initiated against violators. “The penalty for first two violations would be Rs 1 lakh. Subsequent violations will result in cancellation of licence,” he said.

Excise commissioner Ahmed Nadeem added that the government’s plan to affix holograms on bottles would facilitate computerized billing, which in turn would check the MRP violations.

“The hologram contains a barcode that can be scanned. We are going to implement the initiative this year and make computerized billing mandatory at every outlet,” Nadeem said, adding that every outlet should procure equipment for such billing.

The minister also assured that activities of belt shops would be curtailed and the excise officials had clamped down on 5,000 belt shops in Telangana during the election period.