Excise department order allowing bakery to stock, sell hortiwine lands UDF government in controversy

By The Hindu Staff

10 hours ago 2 views

Excise department order allowing bakery to stock, sell hortiwine lands UDF government in controversy — Photo credit: The Hindu

The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) government on Sunday hastily sought to distance itself from a politically controversial Excise Department order allowing a bakery in Chalakudy, Thrissur, to stock and sell hortiwine, a mildly heady 15% proof alcoholic beverage brewed from agricultural produce other than food grain.

Officials told The Hindu that Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan had raised red flags about the “unconsulted” order, which allowed the bakery to buy several cases of hortiwine from the Kerala State Beverages Corporation’s (Bevco) bonded warehouse for off-the-shelf sales in the run-up to the Christmas-New Year season, raising the spectre of unregulated underage drinking and also blindsiding the government as it reworked Kerala’s liquor policy.

Subsequently, Excise Minister M. Liju revoked the licence and sought a report from the Excise Commissioner. Mr. Liju later told reporters that the previous Left Democratic Front (LDF) government had amended the Foreign Liquor Rules in 2024 to allow bakeries, supermarkets and shopping malls to display and sell hortiwine for an annual licence fee.

Originally published by The Hindu on Oct 18, 2026 Read the full article at thehindu.com

Read original

About this page. Sisnoo is an aggregator. This article was imported from a publisher feed and may have been reformatted. Copyright remains with the original publisher, and the headline, image and any quoted text are used for attribution and indexing purposes. Source links are preserved on every item in the archive.