Want to confirm if that bottle of scotch or premium high-end liquor is genuine or fake? A barcode scan or SMS from your mobile phone will be sufficient to reveal this.
To root out the menace of spurious liquor, the state excise department is working on a proposal to make it mandatory for all liquor bottles to carry a hologram and barcode with embedded covert and overt features. This will enable a "track and trace mechanism", which will follow the journey of the beverage from the manufacturer to the final point of sale and also reveal its authenticity to consumers and officials.
Retailers will have to stock special lenses so that consumers can read the covert security features on the hologram, invisible to the naked eye, and thus verify the brew's authenticity. The hologram cannot be replicated or reused and will also reveal if the liquor is duty-evaded or smuggled.
The prime target of the spurious liquor rackets, which make a killing due to the duty evasion and huge margins involved, is the neo-rich class, which seeks to shift from low quality liquor to premium brands but is unable to distinguish between original and duplicate versions.
"This will eliminate duplicate and spurious liquor," state excise commissioner Vijay Singhal told dna. "It will have covert and overt features."
He added that scanning the barcode will enable consumers to know when and where the liquor was manufactured and when it was sent from the distillery to the wholesaler and further to the retailer and if it is an original or a fake. "It will give an exact picture," said Singhal, adding that holograms can't be reused.
These security features will also have a 12- or 14-digit number which can be sent via SMS to a designated number and enable even those who do not have smartphones to get these details.
"The covert features… will not be visible to the naked eye and will have to be read by lenses available at the shops," he said, noting that after the state grants its approvals to the project, tenders will be floated for the design and manufacture of these features.
An app for smartphone users will also be developed as part of the project's roll-out.
The department has also procured high-end machines to enable officials to check if the liquor is original or spurious. "The machine has a deterrent effect," said Singhal, adding that these had been pressed in service for the first time.
