The L-4 is granted to independent restaurants for service of all types of liquor. The L-4 D is the newest category, issued for on-site consumption of wine, beer and mixed alcoholic beverages and varies based on seat covers in the restaurant, varying currently from Rs.2,50,000 to Rs. 5,50,000 for seating capacity of over 200
"We will issue L 4D license to restaurants allowing them to afford to serve beer and wine," Delhi Finance Minister A K Walia, who also announced the policy of allowing sale of wine in the department stores last year, which got notified in the gazette only recently, almost 9 months after the announcement. Fortunately, with the Commonwealth Games hanging on the head, the notification won’t take that long to be gazetted this time. About 100,000 overseas foreigners are expected to visit Delhi during the international event.
The excise department has laid down certain conditions and criteria to issue license to serve beer and wine to the restaurants including a No-Objection Certificate from MCD. Reportedly, these have not been fully specified yet. But the process of issuing such license to the small restaurants is under fermentation.
The government has already announced and given licenses L-53, L53 F for the sale of wine in the department stores, including foreign wines and L-56 for the retail sale of IMFL and foreign liquor- nine incenses have been given already- more are expected within this week and the next few weeks..
This policy change will not help restaurants like Olive, Cibo or Setz but could be interesting to restaurants in Defence Colony and othere if they wanted to stick to wine, beer or mixed alcoholic drinks only. Saurabh Khanijo, CEO-Director of Welgrowth Hotel Concepts which owns IVY, Kylin and Sartoria Restaurants already has full licenses ranging from Rs 650,000-100,000. ' But we have ben thinking of concept restaurants like bistros and cheese and wine bars. This would help us speed up the process and add wine to our repertoire.'
The last decision to be announced before the Games, hopefully would be to roll back the excise duties on foreign wines to the previous levels or at least bring them to the level currently applicable in Maharashtra.
Excise Licenses according to the Policy already announced in April, 2010:
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