The State Excise Department has embarked upon a strategic administrative reform initiative leveraging state-of-the-art modern technology to carry out its various activities through e-Abkari.
Excise Secretary Sushil Kumar Lohani reviewed the arrangements with senior officials of the Department of Excise on Tuesday.
The e-Abkari will facilitate seamless online communication among all excise officials across the State, all licencees, administrative departments and other stakeholders.
This will be done through workflow based systems hosted in State excise portal https://www.stateexcise.odisha.gov.in.
The main objectives of the initiative include generation of actionable information for effectively dealing with spurious intoxicants.
This will aid with improved MIS for control over the movement of intoxicants, enable effective revenue collection through greater traceability, transparency and accountability in tax administration.
Besides, it will detect tax evasion by ensuring all liquor available in the State is sourced and sold through legal channels.
The key functional blocks of e-Abkari project will focus on enforcement activities, arresting revenue leakage and revenue reconciliation using Business Intelligence (BI).
There will be reconciliation of every drop of spirit imported or manufactured and 360 degree profile of all the licencees and registered brands will find place in e-Abkari.
The e-Abkari will make pendency checker for tracking process pendency at all levels.
This will process status information or authenticate permits/passes on the field through Bar Codes and QR Codes or through free Pull SMS or mobile app, said a senior official.
Moreover, GIS tracking of tankers carrying bulk spirit and GPS mapping of all excise establishments enabling effective policy interventions can also be done.
The e-Abkari will have various modules which will be rolled out in a phased manner. Among them, licecee tracking, brand management, licence issue, permit/pass issue, establishment mapping, enforcement monitoring, excise stock inventory management, treasury integration are the
important features which are getting rolled out in the first phase.
Label registration and renewal of licences have already been made operational with renewal of licences of 1857 retailers in the last
week of July.
Complete rollout of the project will have lasting impact on collection of excise revenue by checking revenue leakages, monitoring of activities
of individual licencee, bottling units, distilleries and breweries on real time basis will be done.
Tracking of movement of all excisable items, timely and prompt service delivery as well as checking the sale of illegal and spurious products which are hazardous for human health and safety will be done in the process.
The State Government has made a budget provision of Rs 11crore for this purpose during the current financial year to meet the hardware, software and technical support requirement for the innovative initiative.