nashik excise officials have initiated an exercise of verifying signatures of people mainly women who had signed a memorandum demanding the closure of two licensed country liquor shops in the satpur area the exercise is a precursor to getting a referendum of the local residents on the issue a team of excise department officials is visiting households in the shramik nagar and shivaji nagar areas of satpur to verify the signatures of women who have signed a memorandum to close down the liquor shops in their respective areas as per government norms if more than 25 women of a particular area give a memorandum in writing that a certain liquor shop in their area should be closed down the superintendent of the state excise department has to verify whether the signatures are true or false and if they are found correct he can proceed with an election in the ward to check if more than 50 of women voters or total voters choose the closure of the liquor shop the superintendent of the excise department nashik j b patil said the entire process of completing the formalities for closing down a licensed liquor shop takes three months from the date of the memorandum presented by the residents of the area in this regard apart from this there is also a clause under which if the requisite work is not completed within the threemonth period the deadline can be extended he said that since a month has already elapsed since the letter pushing for the closure of the shops was presented to the collector his department would try to wrap up the entire matter in the next two months incidentally corporator dinkar patil has staged agitations at the state excise department office as well as at the rajiv gandhi bhavan office of the nashik municipal corporation in the recent past to press for the demand of closing down liquor shops he has been demanding the closure of liquor shops in his ward as early as possible