Supreme Court strikes down Maharashtra's methanol rules as disproportionate, issues directions on hooch tragedies

The Supreme Court declared Rules 18A and 18B of the Maharashtra Poisons Rules, 1972 unconstitutional as violating Articles 14 and 19(1)(g). The rules were added by a 2011 notification after a 1991 spurious-liquor tragedy in Mumbai in which around 93 people died from methanol. Rule 18A required sellers to mix a colourant and a bitterant into methanol before selling it to anyone other than drug manufacturers, and Rule 18B provided for confiscation of methanol held without a licence. Chemical manufacturers and traders argued that the denatured methanol was unacceptable to other industries.

Applying the four-part proportionality test from K.S. Puttaswamy, the Court accepted that preventing deaths from methanol-laced liquor is a legitimate aim. It held, however, that restricting purchases through licensing and confiscation would not even remotely achieve that aim. The State had also failed to show that no equally effective, less restrictive measure existed, since the existing safeguards against pilferage, if properly enforced, would work better. The Court then issued directions to the States, among them verifying antecedents before granting licences, periodic stock reconciliation, returns of excess methanol, dedicated and tamper-evident sealed tankers under excise supervision, and specialised hospital cells and more de-addiction centres to deal with liquor tragedies.