Shillong, March 12: The Meghalaya Excise Department has collected revenue amounting to ₹500 crore during the 2024-25 financial year. This was informed by Excise Minister Kyrmen Shylla while replying to a cut motion in the Assembly on Wednesday.
Shylla said that the revenue collected during the last four years were Rs 375.38 crore in 2020-2021, Rs 307.99 crore – 2021-2022, Rs 365.16 crore – 2022-2023 and Rs 458.19 crore – 2023-2024.
He said that measures have been taken to enable the department to streamline and rationalise the duty structure comprehensively leading to additional revenue gains to the state.
Besides excise duty, the revenue is collected in the form of license fees, excise duty, import pass fee, transport pass fee, export pass fee, fines from confiscation etc.
With the emergence of many bottling units, breweries, distilleries, homemade wines licensed by the government in the state, Shylla said that the department is in the process of setting up its own laboratory with qualified technical personnel to test, check and analyse samples of liquor to ensure quality control through scientific analysis.
The government have taken steps to streamline and strengthen the Excise administration in the headquarter and its subordinate offices by posting of officers at appropriate levels to the different district and sub divisional headquarters, he added.
Stating that adequate measures have been taken to combat the menace of illicit liquor, the minister said intensive raids and checking have been carried out in the interior as well as the towns and suburbs.
In Shillong, he said raids have often been conducted under the full glare of the media to promote transparency and accountability in the system which to a large extent produced successful results in minimizing the rampant sale of illicit liquor.
On the cases detected during the last five years, Shylla said 1936 persons have been arrested, 3,139 cases registered and 1858 disposed off cases while Rs 27,24,597 has been realized as fine.
“Government has issued 11 licenses for bottling plants/brewery/distillery, 57 bonded warehouse, 854 wine shops and 105 bars upto February 2025,” he further informed.
