The government has adopted a tough stance on the repeated failures of police and excise department in curbing the smuggling of liquor in UP. Due to lack of coordination between the excise department and police, and due to unavailability of police protection during the raids, the enforcement team of the Excise Department is not able to curb illegal liquor smuggling and movement in UP. In order to deal with this problem, and to meet the shortfall of enforcement constables in the Excise Department, it has been decided that home guards will be deployed on duty.
To curb the smuggling of liquor, from now on, during the raids home guards will be seen alongside excise constables. The UP government took this decision due to shortfall of constables in the excise department. Nearly 50 percent of the constable posts are vacant in the excise department. Till the recruitment of the excise constables, the Home Guards will be deployed for the enforcement work. For this, the Home guards Department has asked for 510 rupees daily for the staff.
This decision was taken by the UP government in a recent meeting on revenue security. There are adequate number of home guards present in all the districts of UP. So there will be no problem in getting Home Guards for the enforcement work of the Excise Department. In the first phase, 500 home guards have been demanded. It has been clarified that there duties will be, till there is shortage of constables in excise department . With the duty allowance of Rs 510 per day, the excise department will compensate the home guards according to the rules in case of some accident.
Experiences from the past, indicates that during the raids on liquor smugglers, the Excise Department team has been attacked several times, and in some incidents the officials were also beaten up. In such a situation the Excise Department seeks help from the local police and due to busy schedule, the police does not support the Excise Officers. Therefore, as an alternative arrangement, Home Guards have been deployed on duty. In this regard, the Excise Commissioner of UP informed that formal decision has been taken to deploy Home Guards in the enforcement work of Excise Department. As soon as the government delivers the budget for this work, it will be started.