The auction of a liquor store in a village in Rajasthan's Hanumangarh district really took a turn for the unexpected when the bidding that started at 11 in the morning ended way after midnight and that too, after the highest bid was over Rs 500 crore. Auctioning of liquor stores in Rajasthan is not a new concept and recently, e-auctions have been restarted in the state with over 7,000 such shops going under the hammer as of now. Former state chief minister Vasundhara Raje had abolished the system but under Ashok Gehlot, the bidding has restarted again.

For this auction, the bidding that started at Rs 72 lakh in the morning kept going on and on and bidders kept quoting steep prices for the store. The bidding went on for the entire day and well after midnight, it ended at 2am with the highest price quoted at a huge Rs 510 crore!

Reports said that the base price of the wine shop in Hanumangarh district's Nohar was at Rs 72 lakh and was sold at Rs 65 lakh in a lottery bid last year. But the e-auction this year shot up the store's value as the highest bid of Rs 510 crores. The liquor store was bought by two women belonging to the same family, one of them named Kiran Kanwar.

The news of the liquor shop shooting up auction price of Rs 510 crore left many flabbergasted, including the officials from the Excise department who had never expected the bid to go up this high.

The highest bid is 708 times more than the base price of the shop at Rs 72 lakh.

According to the excise department rules, the new liquor store owner will have to pay two percent of the shop's cost to the authorities. The new excise policy of the government of the state has also stated that rather than the earlier system of lottery, now liquor stores in the state will be auction online.