Highway or dry way? SC agrees to hear plea on states denotifying highways

The Supreme Court's landmark liquor ban judgement has caused a huge squeeze on states' coffers and many states have started denotifying national and state highways in order to circumvent the apex court order.

Arrive Safe Society, the NGO that was behind the plea that led to the liquor ban order, has moved the apex court again. This comes after the Punjab and Chandigarh High Court dismissed their petition which challenged the denotification order issued by the Chandigarh administration.

The apex court will hear the matter in July.

Owing to the ban, states stand to lose 25 to 45 percent (close to Rs 50,000 crore) of revenues that come from liquor. Hence, they are looking at denotifications to minimise the impact.

Punjab, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal are among the states which consume the most liquor.

Punjab could see a loss of about Rs 15,000 crore owing to the ban. The state has already denotified about seven state highways.

The Maharashtra government has received denotification proposals from three municipal corporations - Jalgaon, Latur and Yavatmal. They have also started working on the process of denotifying the Western Express Highway as well as the Eastern Express Highway. The state stands to lose about Rs 7,000 crore.

West Bengal, which may lose Rs 1,000 crore, has also started the process of declaring about 275 kilometres of state highways.

Other states following suit are Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan, which have denotified as many as 16, 64 and 21 state highways, respectively.