In a setback to the State Government, the Uttarakhand High Court stayed on Wednesday the State Government’s suspension order served on Haridwar and Dehradun district excise officers on April 10, citing their failure to meet the revenue target set by the excise department in April 2018.
Challenging the order, Dehradun district excise officer Manoj Upadhyay and Haridwar district excise officer Prashant Kumar had moved the High Court through filing petitions in which they stated that they both had informed the senior department officers about loss of revenue well before the liquor shops were reallocated.
They said that they could hardly be held fully responsible for the loss of revenue after the reallocation of the liquor vends as they had informed the officers of the estimated loss beforehand. The petition was heard in the division bench of Justice VK Bisht and Justice lokpal Singh and they stayed the suspension order of both the district officers while directing the state government to submit reply regarding the same on April 26. The next hearing has been set on April 26, it is learnt.
Notably, on the direction of the State Finance Minister Prakash Pant, a Government order had been released on April 10 on the behalf of State additional chief secretary (Excise) Dr Ranveer Singh. As per GO, the State Government had suspended Dehradun district excise officer ManojUpadhyay, Haridwar district excise officer Prashant Kumar and Champawat district excise officer Rajendra lal with immediate effect.
Till the next order was issued, additional district magistrate (administration) had been given additional charge of Dehradun district excise officer while ADM (finance) Haridwar lalit Narayan Mishra had been asked to discharge duty as the district excise officer Haridwar and ADM (administration and finance) Hemant Kumar Verma had been asked to do the same in Champawant district.