Excise policy withheld amid objections

Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 7

The state government today withheld the excise policy for 2018-19, which is aimed at breaking cartelisation by the liquor lobby. The policy will be discussed by the Council of Ministers as the move to create small licensing units is not acceptable to distillers-cum-liquor contractors, it is learnt.

Sources in the Excise and Taxation Department and in the liquor trade said the contractors had conveyed their resentment against the policy framed for 2017-18. Focused on creating 1,400 groups (licensing units), it has been operational since last year.

As the government was looking at excise collections of Rs 6,200 crore (up from Rs 5,442 crore for the ongoing fiscal) for 2018-19, the liquor lobby reportedly told the powers that breaking the big licensing units would not help the state realise such high revenue. Already, the contractors in Fazilka, Abohar, Bathinda, Mansa, Moga and Sangrur are suffering losses and finding it difficult to pay excise fees. In case of a manifold increase in the number of licensing units, there would be very few takers for the vends.

Presently, the state has just 200-odd licensing units, with each of these units or groups fetching excise collection from Rs 40 crore to Rs 750 crore annually. The new policy proposed by the Excise Department aims to have no group of more than Rs 5 crore (excise collection in a year). Sources in the liquor trade told The Tribune that they had asked the government to give all vends in one district as a single licensing unit, or at least have a group with minimum excise collection of Rs 25 crore.

Till last evening, the policy was being given the final shape so that it could be approved today. Officially, the reason given for the policy being withheld was a “technical error” in changing the licence issued for bars in hotels from one category to the other, which required a different duty structure. Finance Minister Manpreet Badal later said the policy would come up for discussion on March 12.