Calcutta, Jan. 8: The Bengal government will open only as many liquor shops as “socially acceptable” as part of a new liquor policy that could also offer bootleggers other means of livelihood, finance minister Asim Dasgupta said today.

“We shall smash all illicit liquor dens and at the same time stop opening retail country liquor shops indiscriminately to discourage consumption. Under the new policy, we shall open as many shops as are required to meet the socially acceptable level of demand,” Dasgupta said.

The minister, speaking days after spurious liquor killed 28 people in Calcutta’s Kidderpore, didn’t explain what a “socially acceptable level of demand” would be. But it is being seen as an indication that fewer licences would be granted.

The minister did not agree that a decline in the number of country liquor shops would encourage illicit liquor dens. “We shall see to it that illicit liquor dens are crushed everywhere. Those associated with the illicit trade will be provided alternative employment,” he said, adding pisciculture was an option.

However, political observers said the government had made the livelihood offer with an eye on the Lok Sabha polls. A Trinamul Congress MLA from south Calcutta said the move could have been prompted by the government’s fears of a backlash to this week’s crackdown on such dens. “We have been talking about the proliferation of illicit liquor dens to no avail.”

The finance minister reeled off figures to buttress his point that Bengal didn’t encourage country liquor shops. The state, he said, has only four retail country liquor shops for every one lakh people. The number is 41 in Karnataka, 14 in Maharashtra, 11 in Tamil Nadu and 10 in Andhra Pradesh.

After the Kidderpore deaths, Mamata Banerjee had accused the government of having allowed liquor dens to sprout.