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On Supreme Court liquor order, ‘city of Kerala’ and other please

How the apex court gradually relaxed its tough order on liquor vends along highways
• On December 15, 2016, the Supreme Court ordered a countrywide ban on the sale of
liquor along National and State Highways to check the “menace” of drunken driving. Fourteen months down the line, the court has exempted municipal areas from the purview
of its order, and left it to states to decide whether to allow them in areas under local self- government bodies.
• Several states pleaded for a relaxation of the original order —
• Sikkim said 82% of its area was forests, and 92% of liquor shops would have to be shut down;
• Kerala stressed its geography and “unique” settlement pattern, and asked the court to consider the entire state as a “single city”.
• As the court heard the pleas, it departed from the December 15, 2016 order, in which it had said that “no exception can be carved out for the grant of liquor licences in respect of those stretches of the National or State Highways which pass through the limits of any
municipality corporation, city, town or local authority”.

The beginning

• In 2016, the Supreme Court was hearing appeals against judgments by two High Courts on the location of liquor vends on National and State Highways.
• On February 25, 2013, Madras High Court had ordered the relocation, by March 31 that year, of Tamil Nadu State Marketing Transport Corporation-run liquor shops along National and State Highways.
• On March 18, 2014, Punjab and Haryana High Court, while hearing a PIL filed by Chandigarh-based NGO Arrive Safe Society, had directed Haryana to ensure there were no liquor vends along National and State Highways, and that liquor shops were not accessible or visible from the highways and service lanes. The court had rejected the state’s plea that this action be limited to National Highways.
• On December 15, 2016, the Supreme Court upheld both orders.
• “No distinction can be made between National and State Highways in regard to the location of liquor shops,” it said.
• “A restriction that the (liquor) shop should not be accessible or visible from the National or State Highways or from a service lane… is necessary to ensure that the policy is not surreptitiously violated.”
• Liquor vends could not be “visible or directly accessible from the highway within a stipulated distance of 500 metres from the outer edge of the highway, or from a service lane along the highway”, the court said.

Tamil Nadu plea

Tamil Nadu asked the court to reconsider the 500-metre rule, saying topography and geography differed from state to state, which was the reason excise rules laid down varying distances from highways for the location of liquor shops.
On March 31, 2017, the court relaxed the distance to 220 metres for areas governed by local bodies, and with populations of 20,000 or less.
It also exempted the hilly states of Sikkim and Meghalaya from this rule, keeping in view their peculiar topography.
Sikkim had said that nearly 82% of its area is forested, and 92% of liquor shops would have to be shut if the December 15, 2016 order was implemented.
Re-notification of roads
NGO Arrive Safe approached the court against a March 16, 2017 decision of the Chandigarh Administration to re-notify some roads in the municipal areas as Major District Roads.
These roads had been notified as State Highways in October 2005, and the petition claimed the re-notification was done to circumvent the liquor ban order.
The court rejected this contention, ruling on July 11, 2017, that the December 15, 2016 order “did not prevent the Administration from reclassifying inter-sectoral roads within the city from State Highways to Major District Roads”.
• On July 12, 2017, the apex court granted an exemption similar to Sikkim and Meghalaya to Arunachal Pradesh, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Thereafter, some licences moved the court seeking relaxations, and were allowed, along with the states pleading for exemptions, to file affidavits to substantiate their claims.
• The Kerala affidavit
• Kerala argued that even though the state consisted of municipal and panchayat areas, it should be considered as a single city. “Kerala is very unique (in)… settlement pattern(s)… In other states, the hamlets are surrounded by field/open areas… However, in Kerala, in most of its parts…, it is a continuous spread of habitation without much open lands… The infrastructural facilities… in general do not vary much between rural and urban,” it said.
• Kerala, which has an area of only 38,863 sq km, has a population density of 859 per sq km — much higher that the national average of 382. “It is… a narrow strip…, consists of a large number of national and state highways, (and) almost every corner of the state has road connectivity… Forest and water body areas cover about 30%… As per local laws, agricultural lands… cannot be used for any other purpose. Only the remaining area is available for residential and business use. These peculiar features… make it further difficult for shifting
the liquor outlets abutting the National and State Highways.” Also, it said, the restriction on liquor outlets was adversely affecting tourism.
The latest order
• On February 23 2018 ,
• States can decide on exempting certain municipal areas from liquor ban
• a Bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices Amitava Roy and D Y Chandrachud allowed state governments to decide whether to allow liquor vends in areas covered by local self-governing bodies and statutory development authorities.
• “Having On July 11, 2017, the court exempted municipal areas from the prohibition.
• It said the ban mainly targeted busy national and State highways inter-connecting cities, towns and villages along. The purpose of the ban, imposed in a December, 2016 judgement, was to prevent drunken driving along these busy thoroughfares. “The order does not prohibit licensed establishments within municipal areas,” the court clarified in the July 11 order.
• However, the July 11 order triggered more questions than answers. States, especially Tamil Nadu, came back to the court,asking whether panchayats would also come under the definition of “municipal areas” mentioned in the July 11 order. Tamil Nadu said “municipal areas” were not “intended to exclude areas within the jurisdiction of local self-governing bodies.” The States reasoned that in future, these panchayats might be developed in a manner similar to municipalities, or some of them might be geographically proximate to an urban agglomeration. They sought a clarification about the “obvious uncertainties” thrown open by the order.
• Without intervening, a Bench of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justices Amitava Roy and D.Y. Chandrachud said the court left it to the States to take a decision after examining “whether an area covered by a local self-governing body is proximate to a municipal agglomeration or is sufficiently developed” to apply the exemption granted to municipal areas in the July 11 order.
Diesel or electric: Questions of infrastructure costs, logistics and flexibility for Indian Railways
• Last year, the government decided to electrify the entire broad gauge network of the Indian Railways by 2022.
• Over the years, the rate at which electrification has progressed has been determined both by how much money has been available, as well as the returns on investment that the Railways got from operations on these lines. The more the traffic, the better are the returns on electrified routes.
• However, all electrified routes also ran diesel trains because in a network that has both tractions, total segregation is neither possible nor viable.
• The chief of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council Bibek Debroy has now presented a paper saying the policy of 100% electrification needs more study.
• Electrification is cheaper, but…
• Globally, the cost of operations has been cheaper on electrified routes. However, for it to be cheaper
This is because unlike diesel, an electric engine requires heavy overhead equipment to run.
• Capital expenditure for this electrification is over Rs 1 crore per kilometre. The only way to recover this cost is by running trains — and if the number of trains does not cross a certain threshold, the calculation for the transporter goes into negative territory. On that parameter, the average GTKM value of currently electrified routes is around 45.
• It, therefore, makes more sense to electrify routes that see heavy traffic volumes — which is what the Railways have done over the years.
• This is also why there is no talk of electrifying the 2,000-odd km of metre gauge and narrow gauge lines; the stress is more on converting them to broad gauge first. For the same reason, of the 22,019 km of the busiest double/multiple lines, a little over 82% already stand electrified.
• And everyone seems to agree that electrifying the remaining 3,842 km is a good idea.
• Of the 67,000-odd route km of railway network (narrow, meter gauges included), 39,658 km are single lines with mostly very poor train traffic volumes, almost less than half of the heavy-density electrified routes.
• This portion also includes the “uneconomic branch lines”. When the Railways say they wants to electrify the entire broad gauge network, they mostly mean the remaining single lines on the network.
• Due to the poor density of both freight and passenger traffic, the Railways have not found financial justification for the electrification of these routes. Data show only 28%, or 7,190 km, of single lines are electrified — that too, due to operational reasons.
• With the stress on network capacity expansion, most single lines may be doubled in the future. However, the doubling will have a bearing on easing operational bottlenecks more than increasing traffic volumes — which is mainly determined by economic activity.

So the dilemma is, should the Railways also electrify these routes at a projected loss?

• The cost breakup
• The Railways spend around Rs 16,000 crore in diesel bills, and around Rs 10,000 crore in power bills, annually. It buys diesel at state rates, and power at an average per-unit cost of Rs 6.50.
• Of the Rs 16,000 crore diesel bill, around Rs 8,000 crore are taxes. While the tax component varies from state to state, the Railways on average pay around 53% of the total diesel bill as taxes. Electric traction is more or less tax-neutral. The transporter is also purchasing directly from power producers at best-available rates per unit.
• So, half of the money the Railways want to save is taxes ploughed into the economy that go into welfare schemes of the state, while most of the rest go to oil PSUs.
• Also, stakeholders say, if GST is implemented on diesel, the Rs 8,000 crore the Railways pay in taxes would be almost halved even if the rate is 28%. It remains to be seen if the Railways wait for the government’s GST move before taking a final call on the choice of traction.
• The power gain
• The biggest argument put forth in favour of total electrification is the yearly saving to the tune of Rs 8,000-10,000 crore on the fuel bill. However, calculated at present rates, the total capital cost of electrification could be around Rs 40,000 crore.
• The cost of replacing the current fleet of around 5,800 diesel locomotives could be around Rs 50,000 crore. Taken with the maintenance infrastructure needed, the total figure may be Rs 1 lakh crore.
• The Railways would have to borrow much of this money, while factoring in the cost of depreciation of assets. The servicing of this debt is an issue that needs to be looked at closely, experts say.
• Environment, flexibility
• If the Railways consume around 2,776 million litres of diesel, they currently require around 15,000 units of electricity, mostly coal-based thermal power. Total electrification might require the generation of an estimated 1,800 MW of additional power.
• The Railways have traditionally justified dual traction of diesel and electric on a variety of grounds, including, importantly, operational flexibility. During times of disaster or war, diesel engines have been more reassuring. While talking about 100% electrification, policymakers have discussed keeping a small fleet of diesel locomotives handy for such purposes.

Is Bengaluru about to run dry?

• Cape Town, and the region it is located in, is suffering its worst-ever
drought, which has now gone on for three years.
• The region is also experiencing a long-term decline in average rainfall.
• the city’s water supply system can handle two-year droughts, and can
even withstand one-in-50- or one-in-100-year events, but this drought
is a one-in-300-years event.
Reservoirs in Cape Town and surrounding areas are now less than aquarter full. The largest dam supplying water to the city, the Theewaterskloof Dam, is filled to only 11.3% of its capacity.
The city is fast approaching what the local authorities are calling ‘Day Zero’, when water supply to nearly 75% of the population would have to be cut. After that, water would be rationed at some designated distribution points only.
The city has already reduced water supply from about 1,200 million litres per day in 2015 to about 566 million litres per day. Residents of the city do not have access to more than 50 litres of water per person per day.
Earlier this month, a BBC report listed 11 world cities that were “most likely to run out of drinking water”, and put Bengaluru at number 2, behind only São Paulo, Brazil.
The report mentioned the acute shortage of water in Cape Town in South Africa, where people are now being rationed 50 litres daily, and which many fear could become the first major city to run dry in the modern era. Other cities on the list of the most vulnerable were Beijing, Cairo, Jakarta, Moscow, Istanbul, Mexico City, London, Tokyo and Miami.
• The report noted that more than half of Bengaluru’s drinking water is wasted due to “antiquated plumbing”, 85% of the city’s lakes “had water that could only be used for irrigation and industrial cooling”, and “not a single lake had suitable water for drinking or bathing”.
• The Supreme Court has recently allocated a larger share of Cauvery water for Bengaluru’s nearly 10 million people, but there is little doubt that the city’s water resources must be managed more efficiently.
• Bengaluru originally had multiple sources of water supply in the form of over 200 lakes, abundant groundwater, and supplies from reservoirs and tanks in the Arkavathi river basin — the Hesaraghatta Lake in the north and the Thippagondanahalli Reservoir in the west. These
sources are all but dead now due to the depletion of catchment areas in the wake of uncontrolled infrastructure expansion. This makes Bengaluru critically dependent on the Cauvery — some 100 km away, and now the principal source of the city’s drinking water — and the monsoon.
• Residents get 65 litres per capita per day (lpcd) on average, less than half the ideal amount of 150 lpcd. Of the 270 thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft) of water that was earlier allocated to Karnataka from the Cauvery, 17.64 tmc ft was used every year for the city’s drinking water needs. This share has now increased by 4.75 tmc ft.
• At 150 lpcd, Bengaluru’s current requirement of water, given its population, is estimated to be 24 tmc ft per annum.
• This is expected to rise to 30 tmc ft by 2025. Without considering the 4.75 tmc ft increase in allocation, water supply to the city is short by at least 6 tmc ft per annum. Against a equirement of 1,400 million litres
per day (mld), it gets only 1,250 mld.
• The proliferation of borewells, especially in the core city areas, has led to a massive depletion of groundwater.
• Only about 70 of the 272 lakes in and around the city from four decades ago survive. The government has reclaimed dozens of lakes for bus stands, stadiums, and housing complexes, and real estate firms have been the major beneficiaries of land allotment on lakeshores.
Garbage and sewage have poisoned lakes, and the concretisation of catchment areas has choked inlet channels.
• As much as 207,000 million litres of groundwater was being extracted per annum in Bengaluru, against an annual recharge of only 81,100 million litres per year, the study said.
• Bengaluru has some cushion because the Cauvery is perennial, and the city gets a decent amount of rainfall every year, which can be utilised to meet drinking water needs and recharge the groundwater table.
• Meteorological data of the last 100 years show the city receives an average annual rainfall of 929 mm over 57 rainy days, which, experts say, is a good source of rainwater harvesting across the city’s 800 sq km expanse and 2 million properties.
• The government had tied up with the Japan International Cooperation Agency for a Rs 5,500 crore loan, of which Rs 4,500 crore would be used to bring 10 tmc ft of additional water from the Cauvery to Bengaluru cityy
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