The Jaganmohan Reddy Government is starved of funds. These days, its hands are getting tied up with absence of enough revenue or financial support from all sides. CM Jagan’s favourite Cash Transfer schemes were being badly hit. At such a time, the Government is getting a serious setback from liquor smugglers. Though the officials are booking cases and making arrests on a large scale, the smugglers are continuing to increase their activities. This has caused a serious loss to the State revenue. This in turn is leaving a bad impact on the Government’s ability to give Cash Transfers and even to make timely payment of salaries.

The officials became helpless in the face of the politician-employee nexus strongly involved in smuggling activities. How to stop smuggling in order to increase revenue? Now the Government has come up with the idea of opening ‘liquor super malls’ in major towns and cities. Here, a lot more varieties of brands will be made available. About 100 malls will be opened. With this, there will be lesser demand among the public for particular brands of liquor which are not available at the normal Government liquor shops.

The YSRCP’s election manifesto promised implementation of prohibition progressively, step by step, in a phased manner. As part of this, the number of shops was being reduced. But there are no proposals for reducing shops in the new policy for 2021. On the other hand, the opening of 100 malls is being proposed. This runs contrary to the mission of ensuring zero liquor sale in the State by the 2024 election.

Analysts say that the Jagan Reddy regime will be under greater pressure to increase revenue from liquor sale in future in view of serious financial crisis caused by Coronavirus.