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SCOI Report: H Salve picks up from Rohatgi, continues hoteliers' attack on Kerala liquor ban

Xavier's Residency, Kollam: No booze not fair
Xavier's Residency, Kollam: No booze not fair

Arguments continued by the appellants in the Kerala liquor ban case Kerala Bar Hotels Association vs State of Kerala for the second day on Tuesday (August 18) in the Supreme Court’s court number 11, with senior advocates, Harish Salve and N Venkataraman making a determined attempt to expose the State Government’s “discriminatory” liquor policy.

Harish Salve, representing the three-star hotel Xavier’s Residency, relied on Kerala’s so-called One Man Commission’s report to buttress his argument that the policy was inherently biased, after on Monday attorney general Mukul Rohatgi argued for another four-star hotel and CA Sundaram for a hoteliers association.

The One Man Commission headed by Justice Ramachandran, a former judge of the Kerala high court, was appointed by the State Government prior to the high court’s verdict in the case in March of this year to review the state’s liquor policy. He claimed that he was relying on certain findings of ground reality in that report, which were not challenged in the state government’s affidavit.

Arguing that there is no social taboo in Kerala against drinking, he said prohibition only led to bootlegging. He referred to the failure of prohibition introduced in Haryana, and added that this was the hard reality.

But he said the court was not dealing with Prohibition, but classification. He said he could understand restrictions on the age of the consumer of liquor, the number of hours a liquor shop should be open, but there is no basis to say that one class (five star) is out of these restrictions.

“There is nothing to suggest that the Government applied its mind to come to a conclusion”, he said. “You can’t tar both (four star and five star hotels) with the same brush,” Salve said with his rhetorical flourish.

Salve suggested that the distinction between four star and five star hotels is rather thin. “Five star in Kerala is same as the four star in Bombay.” To impose partial prohibition on this distinction is extremely slippery ground, he argued. Complete prohibition is ideological, but what is the material to justify this distinction, he asked.

Salve told the bench the only distinctive feature of five star hotels was the swimming pool, which four-star hotels don’t offer. But the room tariff of four-star hotels are almost that of five-stars, he pointed out. Based on this degree of standardisation, it is unfair to deny bar licences to four-star hotels, he suggested.

Venkataraman asked that if hygiene standard was the criterion, where is the rational distinction between a five-star and a four-star hotel.

If promotion of tourism is the object, all - irrespective of whether one is four-star or five-star - would like to contribute to it, and the state government will earn more, he suggested.

Arguments will continue on Wednesday, 19 August.

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