The Supreme Court has struck down a 14-year-old Maharashtra rule forcing sellers to adulterate methanol, ruling it failed the constitutional test of proportionality despite its public-safety aim.

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• The Supreme Court struck down Rules 18A and 18B of the Maharashtra Poisons Rules, 1972, as violative of Articles 14 and 19(1)(g) of the Constitution.
• The ruling came on September 18, 2026 in M/s Balaji Formalin Pvt. Ltd. & Anr. v. Union of India & Anr. (2026 INSC 1009), by a bench of Justices J. B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran.
• The rules, inserted through the Maharashtra Poisons (Amendment) Rules, 2011, required sellers to verify a buyer's Form A licence and mix methanol with a colourant and bitterant, except for drug manufacturers.
• Rule 18B separately allowed confiscation of methanol held without a valid Form A licence.
• The regulations traced back to a 1991 hooch tragedy at Chhaya Bar in Andheri, Mumbai, where about 250 people consumed spurious methanol-laced liquor, killing roughly 93 of them.
• Applying the proportionality test from K. S. Puttaswamy (Privacy-9J) v. Union of India, the Court accepted preventing methanol deaths as a legitimate objective but found the restrictions unsuitable to achieve it.
• The Court noted the rules had remained under a legal stay for about 14 years, even as hooch deaths continued to occur despite the regulatory scheme.
• The bench cited more than 600 hooch deaths recorded in Gujarat since 1960 despite comparable denaturing rules, questioning the measure's real-world effectiveness.
• The Court held Maharashtra had failed to show that less restrictive, equally effective alternatives were unavailable to prevent diversion and pilferage.
• It recommended tighter licence verification, stock reconciliation, dedicated tankers and tamper-evident seals as more targeted safeguards instead.
• The bench observed that "forced temperance… is no solution for alcoholism," warning the mandate risked crippling legitimate methanol-based industries such as paints, resins and disinfectants.