Kerala Assembly polls 2026: Renewal of bar licenses ahead of elections shows corruption, alleges Venugopal

Congress leader K.C. Venugopal alleges corruption in Kerala's bar license renewals, accusing CPI(M) and BJP of unethical collusion ahead of 2026 polls.

The State government’s decision to renew bar licences during the election period is one of the biggest instances of corruption, AICC general secretary K.C. Venugopal has said.

Usually, bar licences are renewed once every five years. However, going by media reports, the State government went ahead with the renewal of bar licences even as the classification process by the Union Tourism department was still under way, the Congress leader said.

Mr. Venugopal alleged that bribes worth crores of rupees had been collected from bar owners for renewal of licences. The licence renewals were done in a very secretive manner without waiting for the classification process to be completed and without even publishing the details on the website. This is an even bigger scam than the previous one wherein the working hours of bars were extended, he added.

He said the government was drowning the State in liquor and was submitting itself to all the demands being raised by bar owners. Mr. Venugopal alleged that the Left Democratic Front (LDF) was carrying out the biggest election campaign ever witnessed and that all this money was directly linked to the crores collected by the government from bar owners.

Mr. Venugopal called Pinarayi Vijayan a “compromised Chief Minister” and claimed that a close scrutiny of the candidate lists of the CPI(M) and the BJP would reveal that there is a clear undercurrent or mutual understanding between the two to help each other during the elections.

He alleged that Mr. Vijayan was beholden to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for he lived in constant terror of the ED and hence would never dare to go against the Centre.