Chandigarh: The Punjab council of ministers which on Thursday approved the excise policy for the year 2025-2026, aims to increase its revenue from excise duties by Rs 800 crore over the previous year by fixing a target of Rs 11,020 in the coming year.
Addressing newspersons after the Cabinet meeting, finance and excise minister Harpal Cheema said that the government earned Rs 10,200 crore against the target of Rs 10,145 crore in 2024-2025 while this time, the government has fixed target of revenue of Rs 11,020 crore. Yet, there would not be much hike in the prices of liquor, he added.
Stating that the AAP government has decided to return to the 2022 policy of e-tendering for the allotment of liquor vends, Cheema said that currently it is through lottery draw system. However, while the policy of having an open quota for Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) would continue, the quota for country liquor has been increased by 3%, the Cabinet minister said.
Cheema said that the government has also decided to allow new bottling plants to be set up in the state for which as many as 207 groups (licensing units) would be auctioned.
Taking a dig at the previous Congress government, Cheema asked, while the AAP government is increasing revenue and giving jobs, why is the opposition pained?
CONG FOR CAG PROBE
Meanwhile, Senior Congress leader and the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) Partap Singh Bajwa urged the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) to initiate a probe in Punjab on the lines of Delhi.
``As per the CAG report, the Delhi government incurred a loss of Rs 2,002 crore because of alleged irregularities in formulating and implementing the excise policy in the AAP regime in 2021-22. The CAG report also revealed that the AAP government’s spending on advertising campaigns surged by 1,200 percent between 2018 and 2022," Bajwa said and added that the AAP replicated Delhi's Excise policy in Punjab after it formed the government here.
POLICY TO HELP LIQUOR MAFIA: BJP
Meanwhile, the BJP national general secretary Tarun Chugh also held that the new excise policy announced by the Punjab AAP government would go a long way to help the liquor mafias in Punjab.
Stating that the policy was an extension of what the AAP government had done in New Delhi at the cost of education and health, he held that the chief minister Bhagwant Mann-led AAP government has no agenda for education and health, but for liquor the government is ready to tie with the mafias.
