After 50 Years, Meghalaya Excise Finally Gets a Home in Shillong — and Sets Its Sights on ₹1,000 Crore
For nearly half a century after Meghalaya became a state in 1972, one of its most important revenue departments worked without a building of its own. The Excise Department collected hundreds of crores every year, regulated liquor from bottling plants to wine shops, and ran enforcement raids across the hills — all while its headquarters sat in borrowed or scattered space. That long wait is now ending. The department is moving onto a permanent campus in Shillong, and the government is talking about stretching collections toward ₹1,000 crore.
The shift is more than a new address. It is meant to put offices, enforcement and a testing laboratory under one roof so that a department which pays for schools, roads and welfare programmes can work like a modern tax administration instead of a tenant.
A building that should have come decades earlier
Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma laid the foundation stone for the office of the Commissioner of Excise on 21 December 2021 at Lower Lachumiere, in the Secretariat area. Excise Minister Kyrmen Shylla and senior officials were present. Sangma did not hide his frustration with the delay.
“This building has been pending for a very long time,” he said. “It’s going to be close to 50 years of our statehood and yet an important and revenue generating department like the Excise does not have its own building. Once completed it will be one of the iconic infrastructures in the Secretariat area.”
The same event saw the unveiling of the department’s logo. Shylla spelled out why the campus mattered on the ground. About 80 per cent of the liquor consumed in Meghalaya is produced in bottling plants and breweries inside the state. Yet samples still had to go to the Chemical Examiner in Guwahati, Assam, to be certified fit or unfit for human consumption. The new building was designed to house Meghalaya’s own testing laboratory so those checks could be done in Shillong.
Construction did not move as fast as the speeches. In June 2023, after inspecting the site, Shylla said the contractor had been told to speed up work and even consider double shifts. He hoped for completion by December 2023 or January 2024, while admitting that difficult foundation work had already eaten into the original timeline. The wait that began with statehood stretched a few more years. The point of the campus, however, never changed: give Excise a permanent base, a lab, and room to run IEMS, QR tracking and enforcement from one place.
How collections grew — and where they stalled
Excise is not a side account. It is one of the three pillars of Meghalaya’s own tax revenue, along with GST and sales tax. In 2017-18, the state’s entire own-tax collection was about ₹1,450 crore. By the mid-2020s that figure had roughly tripled. The 2026-27 Budget projects own-tax revenue of ₹4,720 crore, of which excise duties are put at ₹731 crore.
The department’s own year-wise numbers tell a clearer story of climb and dip:
- 2020-21: ₹375.38 crore
- 2021-22: ₹307.99 crore
- 2022-23: ₹365.16 crore
- 2023-24: ₹458.19 crore
- 2024-25: ₹505.66 crore
- 2025-26: ₹477.13 crore
Sangma has often cited the jump from about ₹199 crore to more than ₹450 crore over six years as proof that plugging leakages works. The 2025-26 fall needs a different explanation. In the Assembly, Minister in-charge Excise Brening A. Sangma said manufacturers and suppliers delayed documents needed for brand and label registration and renewal. Sales volumes dropped, and so did duty realisation.
Revenue does not come from duty alone. The state also collects licence fees, import, transport and export pass fees, and fines from confiscation. As of February 2025 the government had issued 11 licences for bottling plants, breweries and distilleries, 57 bonded-warehouse licences, 854 wine-shop licences and 105 bar licences.
QR codes, IEMS and the fight against leakage
The campus is arriving at the same time as the department’s biggest technology push. The Integrated Excise Management System is meant to track liquor from manufacture to the shop counter. Each bottle and carton is to carry a QR code so officers can see, in real time, where stock is and whether it is genuine. Officials have said the old hologram system had reached its limit. A unique code on every bottle makes duplication the company’s problem, not the state’s.
The rollout slipped past earlier deadlines. Vendors asked for more time; the government wanted the Chief Minister at the launch. The aim did not change: stop diversion, counterfeit liquor and unaccounted stock. Commissioner and Secretary Pravin Bakshi has argued that excise money funds development and welfare, so “revenue protection cannot be ignored.” Retail margins were cut from a maximum of 20 per cent to 15.5 per cent. The government says those margins are still among the highest in the country and that private profit cannot override public health, consumer safety and the treasury.
Cabinet amendments in 2025 reclassified IMFL brands, added a general brand category and revised ad valorem duty on beer. Sangma estimated the package would add about ₹90 crore a year if prices stayed competitive with neighbouring states and volumes rose.
Licensing has been tightened in parallel. New wine-shop and warehouse licences were paused so the department could map where outlets cluster — especially near schools and places of worship — and use IEMS data instead of issuing shops only on a Rangbah Shnong NOC. Existing shops will not be forced to move unless owners want to.
Enforcement remains the other half of the story. Over five years the department reported 3,139 cases, 1,936 arrests and fines of about ₹27.25 lakh. Shylla has said raids in Shillong were often done in front of cameras so the public could see the work.
From ₹500 crore to a ₹1,000-crore ambition
For years the political target was ₹500 crore. That line was crossed in 2024-25. The Budget now books ₹731 crore for 2026-27. ₹1,000 crore is not in the printed estimates. It is the next round number officials and the headline both reach for if registration delays end, IEMS and QR codes work as promised, rule changes add the projected ₹90 crore, and local production keeps supplying most of the state’s demand.
That last point matters. Because so much liquor is bottled inside Meghalaya, a working laboratory in Shillong is not a luxury. It is how the state checks what its own plants put on the shelf without waiting on Guwahati. Combined with end-to-end tracking, it is also how the department hopes to prove that higher collections come from fewer leaks, not only from higher prices.
What the campus can and cannot do
A permanent building will not by itself deliver ₹1,000 crore. Collections still depend on paperwork from companies, on whether QR codes are scanned at every hop, on how many shops the government allows, and on whether Meghalaya’s prices stay attractive enough that buyers do not simply cross into Assam. The 2025-26 dip showed how fast revenue can fall when registration stalls.
What the campus does change is how the department works day to day. Officers, records, the laboratory and the IEMS control room can sit together. Samples need not leave the state. The public face of Excise — raids, licences, complaints — can be run from a single, visible headquarters in the Secretariat area instead of a patchwork of rooms.
Sangma’s 2021 remark still stands as the simplest summary. After almost 50 years of statehood, a department that helps pay for the rest of government finally has a building of its own. The next test is whether that building, the lab and the new tracking system turn a ₹500-crore department into one that can honestly talk about ₹1,000 crore — and keep the extra money flowing into the same schools, roads and welfare schemes that excise has always helped fund.
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