LIQUOR LANGAR!: Chandigarh’s Sector 9 Gets a ‘Liquor Langar’ — and a Rude Awakening
North Desk Correspondent
Chandigarh, May 25
Chandigarh has seen many firsts. But a ‘Liquor Langar’ in the middle of one of its most upscale markets? That is one entry the City Beautiful could have done without.
A video that went viral on social media has triggered the arrest of Rajesh Sachdeva, owner of a liquor vend called Liquor World in Sector 9— among Chandigarh’s most well-heeled commercial pockets — after his staff was filmed brazenly pouring alcohol over snow cones and handing them out to people standing in the open market.
Chandigarh Police have registered an FIR against Sachdeva, a resident of Saketri village, under the Punjab Excise Act, 1914 and Section 61(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
The liquor allegedly poured over those cones was Smirnoff flavoured vodka. Police confirmed during their investigation that a private company representative — apparently deployed to run the promotional activity — was also involved. The matter is now being probed further.
The Langar That Wasn’t
The word langar, of course, carries immense weight in the North Indian, and especially Sikh, cultural imagination. It is the sacred institution of the free community kitchen, a tradition of seva, of grain and lentils served without discrimination at every Gurdwara. Social media users, quick with their dark humour, latched on to the imagery — sharaab ka langar, served not from a deg but a vodka bottle — and the phrase ‘Liquor Langar’ has since attached itself firmly to this story.
The irony is not lost on anyone. In a city that, by official reckoning, drinks five times the national average per capita, the idea of a liquor vend staging an open-air tasting session in the middle of Sector 9 market on a regular working day was still enough to draw widespread shock and outrage online.
And what more, the place where all this happened is just a two minute stroll from the Chandigarh Police Headquarters, and the UT Secretariat housing offices of all top officials of Chandigarh administration.
A City That Already Drinks More Than Most
The backdrop makes the ‘liquor langar’ incident all the more striking. Chandigarh — a planned city of barely 12.5 lakh residents — has clocked 13 crore bottles of liquor consumed over the last five years and generated nearly Rs 4,000 crore in excise revenue in that period, according to available. This year alone, excise collections crossed Rs 1,000 crore for the first time in the city’s history, touching Rs 1,009.25 crore in 2025-26. In April 2026 — just the first month of the current fiscal — the city had already collected Rs 100.77 crore.
Ninety-six liquor vends are currently operational — the highest count in six years — and bids for vend licences came in at a 24.63 per cent premium over reserve price this year. Chandigarh’s thirst, in other words, requires no promotional stimulus.
Policy, Enforcement, and a Glaring Lapse
The Chandigarh Excise Policy 2026-27 is, on paper, a tightly-run machine. Every liquor bottle carries a hologram under a Track and Trace system. Transport vehicles carry GPS. CCTV cameras with 30-day recording backup are mandatory at every vend and bottling plant, with live access available to the Excise and Taxation Department round the clock. During 2025-26, enforcement teams conducted 662 inspections of retail vends alone.
And yet, a promotional event — ‘liquor langar’–that allegedly involved pouring branded vodka over snow cones and distributing them to members of the public — in plain view of a posh Sector 9 market — reportedly went undetected by any authority until a video landed on social media and generated enough outrage to force a response.
The question that residents are now asking is not merely whether Rajesh Sachdeva had a licence, or whether the Smirnoff promotion violated excise rules. The sharper question is: how did this happen in one of the most surveilled commercial areas in a Union Territory that prides itself on law and order, and what does it say about the gap between the policy on paper and enforcement on the ground?
Two in the Net, Questions in the Air
The police have so far made one arrest — Sachdeva — and are probing the role of the private company representative who was allegedly deployed to run the promotion. No details of the brand activation agency have been made public.
In a city where the UT Administration has only recently re-introduced the L-10B licence to allow departmental stores to sell alcohol off the shelf — explicitly citing the goal of a “dignified, accessible and quality-driven retail experience” — the Sector 9 spectacle has arrived at a particularly awkward moment for excise regulators.
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