Wine dealers stop picking up stocks in Telangana

This was out of fear of being asked to pay exorbitant penalty of 70 percent on the stock value, Telangana State Wine Dealers Association president D Venkateshwara Rao said

Hyderabad: Fearing the exorbitant penalties being levied by the Commercial Tax department for VAT abatement and insisting on e-way bills, many wine dealers across the State have not purchased stocks from excise depots.

Everyday about stocks worth about Rs.100 crore to Rs.150 crore are lifted from the depots in the State. There are 18 excise depots across the State but a majority of the dealers did not lift stocks on Tuesday. This was done out of fear of being asked to pay exorbitant penalty of 70 percent on the stock value, Telangana State Wine Dealers Association president D Venkateshwara Rao said.

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More importantly, Commercial Ttax officials were patrolling extensively near the excise depots. The moment any truck comes out from a depot, it was being intercepted and seized, citing the absence of an e-way bill. Notices were also served to the dealers asking them to pay a 70 per cent penalty, he said.

Vexed with the harassment, wine dealers’ association members approached the Excise Department on Tuesday to address the issue. Though, a couple of senior officials met the association members, the issue was not addressed till late in the evening.

The association members argued that Excise department needs to issue e-way bill as already all taxes were being collected from the dealers while issuing transport permits to shift the stocks.

This apart, the vehicles were being seized and put up in police stations. Majority of the dealers do not own trucks and hire them from different transporters to shift the stocks to their outlets.

In Khammam, a few trucks were seized on March 3 and have not been released. The truck owners were in no mood to operate the vehicles for the fear of being seized by commercial tax teams. The truck operators rely on daily incomes and they cannot let the vehicles to be in the police stations for different reasons. They were insisting that unless all the documents were provided to the drivers, trucks would not be operated.

Considering all these factors, dealers refrained from picking up the stocks from depots, Venkateshwara Rao said.