Amidst the Enforcement Directorate (ED) turning the heat on Chhattisgarh government in connection with an alleged ₹20,00-crore liquor scam, the ruling Congress on May 15 accused the previous Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime of indulging in an even bigger, ₹4,400-crore face value, excise scam.
Congress’s State media incharge Sushil Anand Shukla demanded an ED probe into the said scam that according to him, was the consequence of the policy adopted by former Chief Minister Raman Singh.
This, he claimed, caused a loss to the exchequer in three separate ways — through irregularities in categorising liquor made by some producers present in the State as IMFL (Indian- Made Foreign Liquor); by giving much higher profits than other States to the country liquor tenderers/licensees in the years between 2012 and 2017 through the sale price fixation of liquor; and by the previous Excise Department entering into criminal conspiracy with various tenderers/licensed liquor contractors to benefit some liquor manufacturers in the assessment of sales tax by wrongly changing the licensing conditions shown in the Rules for the Retail Sale of Liquor of the State of Chhattisgarh.
“The undue benefit to the retail tenderers of country/foreign liquor between the years 2012-13 to 2016-17, by providing higher profit percentage, caused an economic loss of about ₹4,400 crore to the State government,” said Mr. Shukla.
Most of the allegations are already being probed in a 2019-case registered by the Chhattisgarh Economic Offences Wing in which Samund Ram Singh, a former officer on special duty or OSD in the Excise Department, is the main accused.
The new demand by the Congress, however, is that the functioning of the then Chief Minister Raman Singh, former Excise Minister Amar Agrawal, former Excise Secretary and Excise Commissioner Ganesh Shankar Mishra be also included within the purview of this investigation.
Comparisons with Delhi
Drawing a parallel between the allegations levelled by his party and the alleged irregularities in the formulation and implementation of the now-scrapped 2021-22 excise policy of Delhi that led to the arrest of former Deputy CM Manish Sisodia, Mr. Shukla alleged that the Raman Singh government, too, had changed the decades-old excise policy of the State, while at the helm.
In the past ten days, the ED has arrested four persons — including the brother of Raipur Congress’s Mayor and a Special Secretary in the Excise Department — in connection with an alleged ₹2,000-crore liquor scam that it claims was run by a syndicate “comprising high-level State government officials, private persons and political executives of the State government” during the Congress’s tenure. Mr. Shukla said that the excise revenue had doubled during the Congress rule compared to the Raman Singh government days and the ED was trying to defame the Congress government on the directions of the BJP.
The Hindu reached out to Mr. [Raman] Singh for a comment but he said he was not aware of the allegations and would respond once he had gone through the gist.
