The excise department of Uttarakhand is fighting a losing battle on revenue targets in the current financial year. Out of the targeted Rs 3180 Crores for the year 2019-20, the department’s revenue collections are expected to fall short at least by Rs 500 Crore this year.

Unconcerned by this shortfall, the state government is continuing to increase the revenue targets from sale of liquor and it is expected that the target for next financial year would be around Rs 3600 Crore. In the financial year 2018-19 also the excise department was not able to achieve the targeted revenue of Rs 3000 Crore as the collections fell short by about Rs 200 Crore.

The excise commissioner, Sushil Kumar said that the department is trying hard to achieve targets. He seemed confident of achieving last year’s collection. The commissioner added that he has convened a meeting of the officials of the department on February 20 to discuss the issue.

 One of the major reasons for the shortfall in revenue collections is the fact that the department was not able to allot 131 shops in the state. In the excise policy, the department offered a premium of 20 percent on the price of last to the existing shop owners for the year 2019-20.  The owners of as many as 234 liquor shop owners out of total 626 shops in the state refused to operate the shops due to high licence fee and surcharge.

A beleaguered department was forced to offer these shops at 35 percent below the fixed base price. This sop too failed to attract buyers of as many as 131 shops in the state.

The experts are citing exorbitant price of liquor in the state as another reason for the revenue shortfall.

They point out that high price of liquor spawns smuggling from neighbouring states like Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh where the liquor is much cheaper than Uttarakhand. Even as the excise department is struggling to meet the high revenue targets, the Uttarakhand government is pressing hard to extract more revenue from excise. It is worth mentioning here that the excise and mining are two major revenue earners for the Himalayan state.

The government’s emphasis on the excise revenue contradicts the official stand of chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat who on many occasions has said that dependence on liquor revenue should be reduced and the state should develop alternative sources of earnings.