People stood in long queues even before the official opening time of 9 am in front of liquor stores across Karnataka as they reopened after more than a month amid the Covid-19 lockdown.
In some places in the state, people had even ‘reserved’ their spot since Sunday night by leaving slippers, bags and other personal items to represent them.
Some celebrated the re-opening of liquor stores by conducting puja – with burning camphor and lighting incense sticks – while in Belgaum reports have come in of crackers being burst.
Karnataka, which had shut pubs, malls, restaurants, liquor stores and anyplace else where a drink could be had after the countrywide shutdown was announced, had decided to re-open shops from Monday after heavy lobbying by excise minister H Nagesh with chief minister BS Yediyurappa and the cabinet.
Nagesh has said that the state has lost Rs 3000 crore till now due to the ban on liquor sales. Karnataka has an annual target of Rs 22,700 crore for liquor sales.
While pubs, restaurants and liquor stores inside malls and multiplexes are still closed, about 4500 standalone liquor stores were re-opened. These are primarily state-owned Mysore Sales International Ltd (MSIL) as well as MRP stores.
The move to open up large parts of the state back to business meant that traffic jams, which were not reported for the last month, were witnessed again across the state. Even in Bengaluru, which is a red zone district, there were traffic jams across the city.
The move to open up the state also came in for criticism by Janata Dal (Secular) president HK Kumaraswamy.
HD Kumaraswamy said the move was premature and that the state government seems to have taken the decision to shore up its revenues rather than safeguard the health of citizens. He also criticised the move to send back migrants, saying it would result in labour shortage and unavailability.
Meanwhile, Karnataka which had allowed migrants to travel free of cost on its state-run Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) buses till Wednesday said it would extend this facility till Friday.
On Sunday alone 951 KSRTC buses ferried more than 30,000 people to various destinations.
All these migrants are also provided free food and water for the journey, a note from the state government said. Four trains—two to Bihar and one each to Ranchi in Jharkhand and Bhubaneshwar in Odisha—carrying 4800 people also left the state.
In the last 12 hours, Karnataka also registered 28 new positive cases of Covid-19 taking the cumulative tally to 642, which includes 26 deaths and 304 discharges.
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