Ranchi, Feb. 20: The experience of shopping for domestic necessities is set to change in Jharkhand as select departmental stores will now get wine licences that will allow them to sell premium liquor.

Paving the way for a huge change in the way the liquor business was being conducted in the state, Governor Syed Sibtey Razi and his council of advisers today approved the new excise policy that also promises to double the number of liquor outlets in the state from the existing 1,200.

The policy also ends the four-year monopoly of a liquor syndicate by creating a level playing field for all traders who would now be allotted liquor outlets on lottery.

The earlier policy mandated a one-time auction of all shops in a particular district to a single person, thereby favouring only cash-rich businessmen.

This apart, the new policy makes it mandatory to mention a maximum retail price (MRP) on all categories of liquor bottles and sachets, something the syndicate studiously avoided.

Today’s meeting, which cleared the new policy and took a host of other administrative decisions ranging from new police stations to loans for agricultural storage facilities, was chaired by Razi and attended by his advisers, G. Krishnan, Sunila Basant and T. P. Sinha.

Excise secretary D.K. Tiwary told The Telegraph: “Revenue from the liquor trade never exceeded Rs 150 crore for the last four years, though we had fixed the target of Rs 500 crore. The new policy was expected to shore up our coffers by Rs 300 crore till March. We have collected around Rs 145 crore till January.”

Elaborating on the policy, Tiwary said it fixes six categories of shops depending on location.

High revenue generating districts like Ranchi, Dhanbad, East Singhbhum and Bokaro have been placed in the first category. The rest of the municipal corporations, municipalities, notified area committees, blocks and panchayats have been classified in other categories.

A trader can run a maximum of three outlets, but each will have to be from a different category.

Among the other decisions taken today were:

l61 police stations to be created in Naxalite-hit districts and 61 new posts to be created in various categories that will cost the exchequer Rs 70 crore annually

l29 posts were okayed for the subordinate service commission (SSC) for recruiting for non-gazetted posts.

lRs 21 crore grant okayed for Birsa Agriculture University

l91 acres in Ratu block to set up a CRPF group centre

lA loan of Rs 27 crore to be taken from National Co-operative Development Corporation (NCDC) to set up 18 cold storage facilities — six for potatoes and 12 for other vegetables

l38-acre land to be given to forest department in lieu of land acquired for an irrigation project in Singhbhum.