IANS/New Delhi

The Supreme Court yesterday asked the Kerala government not to enforce its ban on sale of alcohol until it hears a batch of petitions today.

“Don’t take any precipitative action till tomorrow,” Judges Anil R Dave and Uday Umesh Lalit Justice yesterday told senior lawyer Kapil Sibal who appeared for the Kerala government.

Kerala has passed an order banning the sale of liquor at all bars and it comes into effect today.

Only five-star hotels were excluded from the ban.

The court asked why only the five-star hotels are allowed to function.

Bar owners in the state challenged the September 3 order of the Kerala High Court upholding the ban.

Sibal told the court that if the bar owners’ petition was accepted, then their licences would have to be restored.

Saying that there was no question of suspending the excise commissioner’s August 28, 2014 notice cancelling the licences, Sibal told the court that the issuance of the bar licence was provisional and subject to the excise policy.

Representing a batch of petitioners, senior lawyer Rajiv Dhawan argued that their licences should survive till the March 31, 2015, expiry date.

He said the bar licence policy was violative of Article 14 as it differentiated between five-star hotels and others.

Dhawan said the excise commissioner’s order cancelling the licences was “arbitrary.”

Another senior lawyer C A Sundram, appearing for another aggrieved party, told the court he was not saying that his licence should remain operative till its expiry date but they should be heard.

“It is going on for 12 years. It has large-scale ramifications. Heavens will not fall. It will cause irreparable hardships to the employees working in hotels and bars. Lakhs of people will be affected,” Sundram said.

“We have already made our bookings. Tourists are coming,” Sundram added.

In Thiruvananthapuram, the ruling Congress Party said international liquor companies and the International Centre for Alcohol Policies (ICAP), supported by major producers of alcohol, were upset with the Kerala government’s new policy.

After a meeting of the state Congress, president V M Sudheeran said the decision by the Kerala government to achieve full prohibition in the state in 10 years has shocked liquor companies.

“India and especially Kerala are huge potential markets for these liquor companies and it’s quite natural they will go to any extent to see that our new policy does not go as planned and they will do everything what they can to subvert this,” Sudheeran said.

“The policy that has been announced is not negotiable and there will be no re-look,” Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said.

“It was the unanimous decision of the Congress-led United Democratic Front and there is no reason to believe that there was undue haste in arriving at this decision,” he said.

According to the new policy, all 710 bars will have to close down by today. Of these, 418 have not opened since the beginning of this year and hence the remaining will have to down shutters.

Meanwhile, the Gtech Group of companies representing all the IT companies in the state has written to Chandy that the new liquor policy will be detrimental to the IT industry in Kerala.

Its chairman V K Mathews told Chandy that no IT company of consequence will plan to set up their facilities in a state which has such archaic regulations.

While Sudheeran and Chandy have made it clear that there is no question of going back, a few allies of the UDF have said such a tough policy should not have been taken.

The UDF is meeting in the state capital today.