On the occasion of Christmas and New Year, Delhiites guzzled over one crore liquor bottles more than worth ₹218 crore during the week-long celebrations and partying, said officials on Monday.
A senior Excise department official informed that the highest liquor sale of 20.30 lakh bottles was reported in the national capital on the New Year eve, December 31, according to the news agency PTI.
He said that a record 1.10 crore bottles of different types of liquor, mostly whiskies were sold in Delhi during 24-31 December. The sold volume of liquor was worth ₹218 crore, he said.
Official figures showed December 2022 recorded an average sale of 13.8 lakh liquor bottles in Delhi, the best year-end sale in the last three years, as per PTI reports.
The Delhi government earned a revenue of ₹560 crore from liquor — excise duty and value added tax — in December 2022, data showed. The sale of liquor in Delhi during December month was 12.55 lakh bottles in 2019, 12.95 lakh in 2020 and 12.52 lakh in 2021 and 13.77 lakh in 2022.
Currently, liquor is being sold in the city through around 550 liquor vends run by four Delhi government undertakings. It is also available at bars in more than 900 hotels, lubs and restaurants across the city.
The Excise Department ended 2022 on a high note with a record sale, though the year posed many challenges for it including a CBI probe into implementation of Excise Policy 2021-22 that was scrapped by the government, PTI reported.
The festival season, also including liquor sale on Diwali, yielded good returns in the form of excise revenue to the department. During Diwali festival in October 2022, over 48 lakh bottles worth over ₹100 crore were sold in Delhi.
As per the Excise Department data, 14.7 lakh bottles worth ₹28.8 crore were sold in the city on December 24, 2022.
December 27 recorded the least number of liquor bottles sold in Delhi during the recent season with little less than 11 lakh bottles worth ₹19.3 crore purchased by consumers.
