In order to practice social distancing and avoid the transmission of coronavirus, the Jharkhand government has allowed home delivery of liquor in some big cities, including Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Bokaro, via the food ordering and delivering platforms, Swiggy and Zomato.

"We have adopted hybrid system for making liquor available in some of the big cities like Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Bokaro, Hazaribagh, Deoghr, Dhanbad, Ramgarh, Giridih and Palamu by opening the retail liquor shops where people can go and purchase liquor taking care of the social distancing. Secondly, people can get home delivery of liquor at their doorsteps through the two food aggregators – Zomato and Swiggi by downloading the app on their mobile phones," Excise and Prohibition Secretary Vinay Kumar Chaubey reportedly stated. He further added, "Firstly, they can purchase liquor from the retail shops and secondly, for those who want to avoid long queues on liquor shops, e-token will be issued to them by logging on the site https://jhexcisetoken.nic.in through which they can get liquor from the shops in the given slot without standing in the queue. People will be given preference over those standing in the queue if they show the e-token."

As on May 20, a total of 107819 cases have been registered across India and 3317 people have died. Tamil Nadu has reported 12448 cases and 85 deaths.