Govt temporarily puts on hold issuing of licenses for opening new winestores: Shylla

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaApril 1, 2025

Minister in-charge Excise Kyrmen Shylla on Tuesday informed that the department has temporarily put on hold issuing of licenses for opening of new wine shops and bonded warehouses pending the coming up of new mechanism to streamline the system of issuing such licenses. 

Speaking to reporters, Shylla said, “We have stopped issuing licenses temporarily. We will come up with a new mechanism. We will start issuing new licenses only fter conducting a thorough study.”

“Our officers are on the job. We are doing a proper study to know where we need to increase the number wine shops and where we need to stop,” he added.

According to him, the decision was taken after receiving complaints from existing wine shop owners that they don’t have proper sale due to presence of too many wine shops.

“Based on that complaint, we stop issuing new licenses. We will study and only then we will go ahead with new licenses. If we saw wineshops are very less in a particular area but the sale is high, we want to give license but we cannot issue it directly until and unless they avail those papers required,” he said.

On winestores located near educational institutions and places of worship, the minister said that the department will look into such matter but there has been no new license issued.

He said that licenses are issued based on NOC issued by the local headman.

“We do respect the sentiments of people and headman is a person, who knows about his locality and he is elected by the people of that village. Therefore, we feel it is required to take his consent so that in future if anything goes against or people have this agitation or against the particular applicants, we can discuss with the headman.”

Asked,  Shylla maintained that the existing winestores will carry on and relocation will be based on request made by them.

He informed that spot visit is being done from time to time by the officers at district level.