WILL THE EXCISE DEPARTMENT WITNESS A REVIVAL NOW?

Jaipur: In the current financial year, one of the major revenue collection agendas is before the Excise Department, headed by its brilliant and result oriented 2013 batch IAS Anshdeep, who took over the reins of the department only two months ago.

In fact, he has a tough way ahead since the target is Rs 17,000 crore, against which in the first month of the current financial year, April 2024, it seemed that all was not well in the department. There are a total of 7662 liquor shops in the state, of which 750 are closed as of today. This means that the revenue that could have been generated from these shops is also not available to the department.

In the new financial year, a total of 674 shops have been auctioned, while 2,797 have renewed their licenses, and the date for the renewal of licenses for the current financial year has been set to June 30 for the remaining 3,472 shops. But despite this, the liquor business in the state is suffering, and the brunt of this is being faced by the state government.

Actually, under the Gehlot government, the Excise Department was not given proper treatment. The then Chief Minister of State Ashok Gehlot held the reins of the department for the first three years, but with his entire focus being pointed towards saving the government, the Excise Department did not get the necessary attention at the level of the chief minister. Thereafter, in November 2021, the excise department was handed to Minister Parsadi Lal Meena, but the situation did not improve; rather, it worsened further, and one of the main reasons was that Parsadi Lal’s focus was more on the health department.

What rubbed salt in the wounds was the frequency with which commissioners of the Excise Department were changed.

The department saw nine Commissioners in merely five years of the government with Prithvi Raj, Somnath Mishra, Joga Ram, Chetan Ram Deora, Ravi Kumar Surpur, Prakash Rajpurohit, Kumar Pal Gautam and Om Prakash Kasera helming the responsibility. Interestingly, the BJP government from 2013- 18, under Vasundhara Raje as Chief Minister, changed only three Commissioners in the five years. Working under the overall supervision and mandate of Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma, Finance Minister Diya Kumari and ACS Finance have also taken up regular monitoring of revenue exercise. At present, one of the ray of hope is that CS Sudhash Pant has taken over a monthly review exercise of all the major departments including the Excise Department and Additional Chief Secretary Finance Akhil Arora has also started taking fortnightly review meetings regarding revenue collection. All this attention to revenue collection is bound to bring some speed and improvement in the revenue collection map of the state.