New Delhi: Delhiites guzzled over one crore bottles of liquor worth more than Rs 218 crore during week-long celebrations and partying spanning Christmas eve to New Year’s eve, officials said. The highest liquor sale, of 20.30 lakh bottles, was reported in the national capital on December 31, New Year’s Eve. The city gulped down liquor worth Rs 45.28 crore on the day welcoming the new year, a senior Excise department official said on Monday, news agency PTI reported.
A record 1.10 crore bottles of liquor of different types, mostly whiskies, were sold in Delhi during December 24-31. The sold volume of liquor was worth Rs 218 crore, he was quoted as saying.
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. The Delhi government earned a revenue of Rs 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.
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, pubs 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 the implementation of Excise Policy 2021-22 that was scrapped by the government.
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