Atono Tsükrü
Kohima, April 5 (EMN): With the introduction of the Nagaland Liquor Total Prohibition Act 1989, the revenue of the Excise & Prohibition Department has been drastically reduced. This was mainly because the chief functions of the department underwent a sea of change from regulatory role to enforcement.
The functions and duties of the department were shifted from revenue collection and regulatory role to enforcement of the NLTP Act ’89 and NDPS Act ’85 in the state.
As per the annual administrative report of 20I6-17, it was seen that prior to the introduction of NLTP Act 1989, the revenue earned by the department during 1987-88 came to Rs 584.37 lakh while during 2016-17 the revenue comes down to Rs 379.08 lakh. The revenue earned can be seen from the figure of revenue receipts as under:
The revenue during the current financial year of Rs 379.08 lakh was from the revenue receipt on excise duty and license fee (April 2016 to January 2016) amounting to Rs 333.71 lakh, and Rs 45.37 lakh was from the fine amount collected from compounding of cases u/s 67 of the NLTP Act 1989.
Meanwhile with its functions focusing mainly on preventive measures, control of possession, sale, consumption, manufacture and transportation of liquor and smuggling of excisable goods and other narcotic drugs in the state, the department has seized huge quantity of IMFL, drugs and other drugs from across the state during the period of February 2016 to January 2017 as shown in the table:
Although the department is said to have its district Excise offices in all the eleven districts, in the absence of Superintendent of Excise, the district Excise offices at Kiphire, Longleng and Peren are presently headed by Deputy Superintendents only.
At the same time, due to absence of post creation the department has engaged some contingency paid employees at fixed pay at the directorate, districts and sub-divisional offices.
