New Delhi, Sep 28 (PTI) As many as 18.61 crore liquor bottles of all shapes and sizes were sold from Delhi tourism department off shops over the past two fiscals, with beer most popular during Julys, according to an RTI reply.
Among spirits, Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) was more in demand than Imported Foreign Liquor (IFL), with Delhi tourism outlets selling about 4.14 crore IMFL bottles in 2024-25, compared with just 22.72 lakh bottles of IFL, the reply — accessed by PTI — shows.
The gap widened further in 2025-26, when IMFL sales touched 4.47 crore bottles, nearly 20 times more than the IFL sales of around 23.3 lakh bottles during the fiscal.
For IMFL connoisseurs, January of 2025-26 was marked by heavy purchase, with shops selling around 45.4 lakh bottles. February logged nearly 43.3 lakh IMFL-bottle sales, while November saw around 42.3 lakh such bottles fly off liquor shop shelves across the capital, as per the data.
With Diwali and a host of festivals, November also saw a sharp jump in IMFL sales from the previous month. After some 26.6 lakh IMFL bottles were sold in October 2025-26, the figure climbed to nearly 42.3 lakh in November, with more than 15 lakh additional bottles sold during the month, data shows.
Holi in March too called for celebration, marked by IMFL sales touching nearly 37.9 lakh bottles in 2025-26, compared with around 33.1 lakh bottles sold during the corresponding period in the previous financial year.
The 2025-26 fiscal also saw higher liquor purchases than the previous financial year, with sales rising from around 9 crore bottles in 2024-25 to about 9.61 crore in 2025-26, according to the reply.
The Delhi tourism department runs 233 liquor shops selling 1,013 brands, giving tipplers across the city a wide choice.
Beer drinkers, on the other hand, fervently sought their fix during summers. July 2024 saw around 48.5 lakh beer bottles sold, the highest monthly beer figure in the two-year period. In July 2025, another 42.4 lakh beer bottles disappeared from off-shop shelves.
Beer sales rose from about 3.51 crore bottles in 2024-25 to 3.76 crore in 2025-26, with 25 lakh more beer bottles sold during 2025-26, the RTI reply said.
The second half of 2025-26 also saw beer sales pick up. From October to March, around 1.98 crore beer bottles were sold, compared with around 1.78 crore bottles during the corresponding period a year earlier.
April, too, proved busy for liquor outlets, with nearly 83.5 lakh bottles across categories sold in 2025-26, up from about 69 lakh bottles in April 2024-25. May saw nearly 80.3 lakh bottles purchased, compared with around 68.7 lakh bottles during May 2024-25.
June turned out to be the biggest month for overall liquor sales in 2025-26, with 93.9 lakh bottles sold.
November saw another jump. Delhi liquor shops sold nearly 83.9 lakh bottles across categories, compared with about 67.7 lakh bottles in November 2024, a difference of more than 16 lakh bottles.
Imported liquor, however, remained a niche choice. IFL sales stood at about 22.72 lakh bottles in 2024-25 and rose only marginally to around 23.3 lakh bottles in 2025-26.
IFL sales moved up from about 6.9 lakh bottles between April and September 2024-25 to nearly 9.9 lakh bottles during the corresponding period in the next fiscal, before losing momentum during later months, the data showed.
January 2025-26 saw a lull in imported liquor sales, with about 2.83 lakh IFL bottles purchased, down from nearly 3.72 lakh bottles a fiscal earlier. October too saw a sizeable fall, while April recorded a sharp increase.
Imported beer had a bigger market than IFL spirits. Around 1.12 crore bottles of imported beer were sold in Delhi in 2024-25, with the figure rising to around 1.14 crore bottles in 2025-26.
IFL beer numbers also picked up in the latter half of the year, with more bottles sold between October and March than during the first six months of 2025-26.
Thus, we may surmise from the figures that when Delhiites go liquor-shopping, Indian-made spirits and beer are on the top of their lists, while imported spirits remain a niche drinking choices. PTI SHB ARB
ARB
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