Delhi Assembly Elections 2025 | Excise teams seize 20,000 illicit liquor bottles worth Rs 50 lakh ahead of polls

New Delhi: The Delhi government's excise department has seized nearly 20,000 bottles of illicit liquor worth Rs 50 lakh over the last fortnight, since the Model Code of Conduct for the Assembly polls came into force, officials said on Friday.

The total worth of the seizures, including 15,376 litre of illicit alcohol (both Indian-made foreign liquor or IMFL and country liquor) and 32 vehicles stood at around Rs 1.5 crore, they said.

So far, 52 cases have been registered in connection with the seized illicit liquor. The liquor seized by the excise department after the imposition of the MCC is around 25 per cent of the total seizure, including that by the Delhi Police, the officials said.

Teams of the Excise Intelligence Bureau (EIB) have been working hard to gather inputs on liquor smuggled mostly from neighbouring Haryana and catch the offenders, said a senior excise department officer.

Voting for the 70-member Delhi Assembly is due on February 5. The counting of votes is scheduled to take place on February 8 and the excise department has declared both days as "dry days" in the city.

The MCC came into force with the announcement of the poll dates on January 7.

The EIB teams intercepted two vehicles from Burari and Mahipalpur on Thursday night, and seized a total of 5,000 bottles containing 3,600 litre of smuggled liquor worth Rs 12 lakh, the officer said.

In the first operation, an excise team chased a truck carrying 3,036 liquor bottles for 14 km after it entered Delhi through GT Karnal Road and intercepted it in north Delhi's Burari, the officials said.

A total of 253 cases of liquor (for sale in Haryana only) were seized from the truck. they said.

In another operation, a mini-truck was caught in Mahipalpur and 151 cases with 1,812 bottles containing 1,317 litre of liquor were seized, the officials said.

With a small number of enforcement staff and limited resources, the department has been working hard to curb the illicit-liquor menace during election times, according to the directions of the Election Commission, the excise department officer said.

"Since the imposition of the MCC, our teams have been registering three FIRs daily on an average and seizing 1,000 litres of liquor every day, conducting regular raids," he said.

The department has employed the strategy of intensive patrolling and checking at the inter-state borders, particularly those with Haryana, because these "dark spots" mostly lying under non-conforming areas do not have liquor vends, the officer said.

Following the EC's directions, the excise department has also issued instructions for hotels, clubs and bars not to do "coupon-based and mass bookings" in view of the polls. Also, inspections of bonded warehouses of liquor and checking of CCTV cameras have been intensified to prevent any malpractice, the officer added.