Cuttack, March 19: The state government has decided to withdraw a notification to introduce an e-auction mechanism for liquor shops. This was disclosed by the government in Orissa High Court today while replying to a writ petition seeking quashing of the notification.

The state cabinet had passed it on February 27.

Prasanta Kumar Mohapatra, owner of a retail Indian-manufactured foreign liquor outlet at Keonjhar, had filed the petition challenging it.

“The division bench of Justice Indrajit Mahanty and Justice Raghubir Dash disposed of the petition after advocate-general Ashok Mohanty stated before it that the state government had decided to withdraw the notification for e-auction issued by the excise department,” petitioner counsel Pitambar Acharya told The Telegraph.

The court disposed of the petition along with several others that had challenged the notification.

The petition stated that state government had issued the notification despite a former excise commissioner pointing out in a report on July 6, 2012, that an auction process “can organise vendors for formation of syndicates”.

The auction process left room for “entry of dummy and unscrupulous bidders” and “can give scope for speculative bidding and surrender of shops at a later stage”. The auction process “can increase monopoly of big houses and frighten away the small vendors who are ready to run the shops and pay the government out of the profits of the shop”, the report had said.