The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Close liquor shops by July 31: Ramadoss

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 30, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Close liquor shops by July 31: Ramadoss

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, JUNE 29. The Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) has urged the State Government to close Indian-Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) shops by July 31.

"If the Government fails, our women's wing will launch an agitation on Independence Day to lock wine shops," S. Ramadoss, PMK founder said addressing a meeting organised by the party women's wing.

Initially, the party's campaign would be focused on rural areas as, the PMK leader said, the Government had opened 3,500 shops in villages.

Deploring the AIADMK Government's approach on this subject, he said it was `unpardonable' that it viewed opening of shops as a "revenue-earning exercise."

The Government's role became more condemnable as the District Collectors themselves opened some shops.

On the one hand, the Government was making liquor easily available to rural people while on the other, it was making higher education inaccessible to them, Dr. Ramadoss complained.

The former president of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC), Kumari Ananthan, recalled how Mahatma Gandhi, Rajaji and other leading lights of the freedom movement vigorously campaigned for prohibition.

G. K. Mani, PMK president, said wine shops had, of late, witnessed a mushroom growth in a social milieu, which once abhorred drunkards.

Sakthi Kamalambal, president of the PMK Women's Wing, wondered how the administration was making available all categories of liquor all the time while the people were often turned away for non-availability of essential commodities in fair price shops.

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