AP to Make Excise Department a Unified Single Force

Vijayawada: Andhra Pradesh government has overhauled the prohibition and excise department and revoked the Special Enforcement Bureau (SEB) to make it a unified single force. Excise principal secretary Mukesh Kumar Meena issued an order here on Friday to restructure the department's structure, jurisdiction and staffing pattern with immediate effect. The government said it had initiated this overhaul to implement transparent excise administration, ensure the availability of standard and quality liquor, adopt best practices, improve governance and increase efficiency.

The government order says that an internal committee constituted to evaluate the department’s restructuring efforts from 2020 to 2024, found them counterproductive and recommended reverting to the structure existing before 2019 which had a single line of control. As SEB has been revoked, all the officers and staff working with it have been relieved and asked to report to the excise department.

As per the new staffing pattern, the department will be headed by an IAS officer as the commissioner with an IPS officer in the cadre of SSP/DIG as director of enforcement. An additional commissioner and two joint commissioners will be in the headquarters to assist the commissioner while 16 deputy commissioner posts and 24 assistant commissioner posts have been sanctioned.

In the districts, the department structure will be headed by a district prohibition and excise officer, who is from the cadre of excise superintendent, assisted by an assistant excise superintendent. There will be 208 prohibition and excise stations in the state with each one to be headed by an excise inspector serving as a station house officer assisted by two to three sub-inspectors, two head constables and eight or nine constables. As many as 28 task forces, 29 check posts and 19 mobile patrolling parties will operate.

As to the distillery wing, quality control of alcoholic products will be ensured along with analysis of crime case samples by five regional excise labs with each one headed by a chemical engineer and supported by assistant chemical engineers. All 29 excise supervisory officers will continue in 29 depots.

Following the restructuring, the officers and the staff members, especially from SEB, are jubilant and some of them conducted “palabhishekam” to the portraits of Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu and excise minister Kollu Ravindra to express their gratitude. Meanwhile, the new excise policy has to come into effect from October 1. It has to be seen what the government will do by that time.