Fin Min effects excise duty recovery of Rs 750 crore from CIL

NEW DELHI: Central government's ' Maharatna' company Coal India Ltd ( CIL) and its seven subsidiaries were detected evading excise duty for two years and made to cough up about Rs 750 crore in duty, revenue officials say.

Acting on intelligence, the officials of Directorate General of Central Excise Intelligence began a probe last month against CIL and its coal producing allied firms and found that they were evading payment of excise duty, official sources said.

The investigation showed that the seven subsidiaries of CIL were charging and collecting 'royalty' and 'stowing excise duty' from their customers on the assessable value of coal being sold by them, they claimed.

But the collected duty was not passed on to the government, they said.

The alleged excise duty evasion was estimated to be about Rs 750 crore for the past two years, the sources said.

Repeated phone calls and emails to spokesperson of CIL and Director ( Finance) did not yield any response.

Stowing excise duty -- levied for rehabilitation, stowing and infrastructure development of abandoned mines -- stands at Rs 20 per tonne of coal. Royalty is an amount payable by a lessee to the lessor for removing or consuming a mineral like coal. The royalty charges vary from Rs 90 to Rs 250 per tonne on the basis of coal mines.

At present, excise duty at the rate of 6 per cent is payable on the assessable value of coal.

During the investigation, which began late last month, the revenue department officials checked the accounts of all the seven subsidiaries.

CIL officials are understood to have admitted excise duty liability on part of subsidiaries, the sources said.

The subsidiaries last week paid about Rs 746 crore to the central government as their excise duty liability for the past two fiscal years, they said.