Liquor tamasha banned at Carnival

| 20 February 1998 17:42 IST

It is yet another blow to the Goa government, which is attempting hard to protect the liquor lobby in a tourist state. Heavy restrictions are imposed by the court now, on promotion of liquor during Goa's week-long famous Carnival festival, beginning here from tomorrow.

The liquor companies, which had plans to participate in the Carnival float parade to display its products and not any kind of culture, have now withdrawn, due to last-minute intervention by the local bench of Mumbai high court.

Blatant violation of the Goa Excise Duty Act, 1964, banning all kind of liquor promotion through advertisements or sponsorships for over three decades now was recently challenged by the Goa Foundation, an NGO, led by Dr Claude Alvares.

The state authorities had otherwise succeeded in systematically portraying Christmas (held in December) and Carnival (held in February) as the festivals, where liquor flows like water, to attract tourists from the world over.

More than a cultural fiesta, Carnival had thus become a fully commercialised event, hijacked by the liquor and tobacco companies, till it was boycotted by the public and banned by Church for five years, since 1986.

Imposing a strict code of conduct to prohibit nudism and commercialisation, the government revived the state-sponsored Carnival since 1991.

The code violation however began since last year, with a couple of liquor companies using the Carnival to promote its brands by displaying huge cut-outs of bottles etc, in collusion with the state tourism department.

Thus Dr Claude Alvares got the provisions of Goa Excise Duty Act enforced through court intervention since December last year, as a result of which all the liquor hoardings were razed down and newspaper advertisements banned.

But the authorities retaliated, issuing a notification based on the exception clause on the eve of Christmas, exempting ban on liquor promotion for seven days during such festivals. While the Foundation sought a stay on the notification, the high court has now granted the interim relief.

The court has directed the authorities to strictly comply with the code during the Carnival parade, as per which the sponsored floats should not display cut-outs of its products, liquor or otherwise, but only banners along the sides of the float.

While tourism director U D Kamat assures that the court directives would be strictly implemented, Dr Alvares alleges that it is publicly exposed now that the local Congress government is working for the promotion of the liquor lobby, in the name of tourism promotion and festivities.

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