Delhiites guzzle 1 cr bottles of liquor worth Rs 218 crore

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 eve, officials said. The highest liquor sale, of 20.30 lakh bottles, was reported in the national capital on December 31, the New Year 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. A record 1.10 crore bottles of liquor of different types, mostly whiskies, were sold in Delhi during December 24-31. The volume of liquor was worth Rs 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.

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. Presently, 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 implementation of Excise Policy 2021-22 that was scrapped by the government. The festival season, also including liquor sale on Diwali, yielded good returns in the form of excise revenue to the department. During Diwali in October 2022, over 48 lakh bottles worth over Rs 100 crore were sold in Delhi.

As per the Excise Department data, 14.7 lakh bottles worth Rs 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 Rs 19.3 crore purchased by consumers.