The Telugu Desam Party-led National Democratic Alliance government raked in moolah from just sale of applications for wine shops, let alone getting the revenue from licence fee and excise duty for the next two years.
The deadline for the receipt of applications for getting licence for wine shops ended at 7 pm on Friday and as many as 84,624 applications were received for 3,396 liquor shops across the state.
With the non-refundable application fee for each shop is Rs 2 lakh, the sale of applications fetched nearly Rs 1700 crore to the Chandrababu Naidu government, which is at least twice the amount it had got during the previous regime.
The allotment of shops to the applications would be done through a lottery on October 14 and the allotment would be done with effect from October 15. The new excise policy will come into effect from October 16.
Vijayawada accounted for the highest number of applications of 5,704 for 113 wine shops, followed by 5,178 applications for 144 shops in Eluru district, 4,297 applications for 127 shops in Guntur district.
High demand for shops was also witnessed in Vizianagaram, West Godavari and East Godavari districts. ASR district received the least number of 1151 applications for 40 shops.
