Minister for Commercial Tax, Excise and Prohibition K. Narayana Swamy said that the YSRCP government and Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy are not considering the income through sale of liquor as a financial resource and every move being made gradually is in the interest of the public.
Addressing a press conference after a review with Commercial Tax (CT) officials here on Saturday, Mr. Narayana Swamy emphasised the need for every citizen of the State to support prohibition of liquor in the State.
“But some people are trying to defeat the effort being made by this government and make it a failure. I also appeal to the Leader of the Opposition N. Chandrababu Naidu to support the initiative,” he said.
Prohibition of liquor would bring down the cases of kidney and heart-related ailments in the State which in turn would lessen the burden on Arogyasri. Equal focus was on illicitly distilled (ID) liquor and hereafter those at the helm of ID liquor manufacturing would be booked instead of just the labourers, he said.
Tax collection
About the performance of the CT department, Mr. Narayana said elections and other interruptions slowed down the tax collection process towards the target of ₹55,243 crore.
However, collection picked and against the August target of ₹22,464 crore a sum of ₹18,808 crore had been realised, he said. Vijayawada-2, Kakinada, Eluru and Kurnool circles were performing well with over 91% collection but Vijayawada-1 and Guntur were lagging behind, he added.
He asked officials to go for physical verification of company registrations as online registration had paved the way for bogus companies.
The Minister said due to court cases ₹5,000 crore revenue was held up and expert legal help would be taken to pursue the cases effectively.
