Tipplers across Jharkhand could have reason to rejoice soon.

The excise department has, through a circular served to all 24 districts, sought suggestions on whether to start sale of liquor through licensed outlets or via home delivery.

“Not only the district excise offices, but also the licensed liquor shop owners have also been roped in to give suggestions as to how to open up liquor sales without inviting crowds,” Manoj Kumar, assistant excise commissioner, Jamshedpur, told The Telegraph on Saturday.

He said the responses should be in within two days, based on which the state excise authority will resume liquor sales.

Of the 130 licensed liquor shops in East Singhbhum district, 104 are located in the steel city, where liquor worth Rs 90 lakh used to be sold every day before the lockdown was imposed to ward off the novel coronavirus threat.

However, many liquor shop owners were continuing sales through the backdoor till the first week of April. After the backdoor sale came to light, the excise department had sealed all the 130 shops, bringing sales to a standstill.

Insiders revealed that between the period of March 25 and April first week, several licensed shop owners had shifted the stock of liquor from the shop to safe places and continued to sell them at a premium.

“The liquor shop owners would sell to known customers through a system of home delivery on getting calls over cellphones. But now the stock made in illegal ways has also exhausted, thus leaving much room for spurious liquor to reach customers in large numbers,” said an excise department source.

“As the state government may extend the lockdown further in view of the spike in coronavirus positive cases in the state, the excise department has also taken the initiative to open up liquor sale in the state but we will have to work out a way to ward off crowds of people at the liquor shops,' a senior excise department official told The Telegraph.