Hyderabad: Businesses in Telangana’s capital are silently preparing for celebrations on 31 December as the government has not imposed any stringent restrictions, despite an order from the high court. The K. Chandrashekar Rao-led state government, in fact, granted permission to bars and pubs to serve liquor till 1 am on New Year’s Eve.
In an order released Tuesday, the Excise Department permitted licence holders of bars, clubs, in-house (guest house events), and events to serve liquor up to 1 am, while retail shops are allowed to be open for business up to midnight.
According to pub owners and event management companies in Hyderabad, they are running businesses as usual for the most part. While they aren’t hosting any special events, there is no restriction on people walking in to these venues to celebrate New Year’s Eve.
The Telangana High Court had, last week, asked the state government to impose restrictions similar to the ones put up in Maharashtra and Delhi, as it heard a batch of pleas seeking restrictions. At least seven states and Union territories including Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi imposed a night curfew owing to the rise in Covid cases amid a rapidly spreading Omicron variant.
The government, however, released an order on 25 December banning rallies and public meetings till 2 January, but permitting “events involving congregation of people” with basic directions such as physical distancing, mandatory masks and thermal screening.
“This is like an insult to the court orders. The court specifically mentioned that similar restrictions as that of Maharashtra, Delhi must be imposed in the wake of Christmas, New Year and even Sankranti because there would be a lot of events at that time,” said advocate Prabhakar Chikkudu, who represented the petitioners.
“They just released a loose order — mentioning nothing about these events but randomly saying public meetings are banned. Public meetings indicate political public meetings. The order allowed events with a congregation of people. They cleverly ignored festivals,” he said.
“It is obvious these events generate a lot of money and the government gets liquor revenue, tax on eatables. For the revenue, they’re ignoring the right to life,” he alleged.
The court will take up the case again Wednesday.
ThePrint reached Director of Public Health G. Srinivasa Rao for a comment via phone calls and text message but there was no response until the time of publishing this report. Other health officials also did not comment on the issue.
“This is like an insult to the court orders. The court specifically mentioned that similar restrictions as that of Maharashtra, Delhi must be imposed in the wake of Christmas, New Year and even Sankranti because there would be a lot of events at that time,” said advocate Prabhakar Chikkudu, who represented the petitioners.
“They just released a loose order — mentioning nothing about these events but randomly saying public meetings are banned. Public meetings indicate political public meetings. The order allowed events with a congregation of people. They cleverly ignored festivals,” he said.
“It is obvious these events generate a lot of money and the government gets liquor revenue, tax on eatables. For the revenue, they’re ignoring the right to life,” he alleged.
You must be logged in to post a comment.