Excise Officers and Powers (Sections 6–13)

Chapter II of the Chhattisgarh Excise Act, 1915 builds the administrative skeleton of the entire liquor and intoxicant regime. Sections 6 to 13 move from a saving clause, through the creation of the Excise Commissioner, Collector and subordinate excise officers, to the substantive controls on import, export, transport and licensing that those officers actually administer. Because the Chhattisgarh Act is a verbatim continuation of the Madhya Pradesh Excise Act, 1915 (Act II of 1915), which itself follows the Bihar and Orissa and Central Provinces models, the case law of the parent statutes applies directly. The recurring examination theme is the status of an excise officer: is he a police officer for the purposes of section 25 of the Evidence Act, and what flows from the answer?

The scheme of Sections 6-13

The block of provisions divides cleanly into two halves. Section 6 is a saving clause; Section 7 (with the inserted Section 7A) is the establishment-and-control engine of the Act; and Sections 8 to 13 are the first substantive controls that the newly-created officers enforce. Section 6 provides that nothing in the Act shall affect the Sea Customs Act, 1878, the Indian Tariff Act, 1894 (except its Section 6) or the Cantonment Act, 1910, or any rule or order made thereunder. Its function is to prevent the State excise law from colliding with paramount central customs and cantonment legislation, an important reminder that excise is a concurrent field where central instruments retain priority over intoxicants crossing national or cantonment limits. Sections 8 to 13 then set out the State Government's power to prohibit import, export and transport, the restriction and pass requirements, and the licensing of manufacture. These are the substantive duties for which the officers in Section 7 exist; the officer provisions and the power provisions must therefore be read together rather than in isolation. See the companion notes on transport, import and export and on manufacture and sale of liquor.

The Excise Commissioner: Section 7(a)

Section 7(a) empowers the State Government, by notification, for the whole or any specified part of the State, to appoint an officer styled the Excise Commissioner who, subject to such control as the State Government may direct, shall superintend the administration of the Excise Department and the collection of the excise revenue. The Commissioner is thus the apex departmental authority, not a creature of statute with independent powers but an officer whose superintendence is always subject to executive control. The phrase "superintend the administration" is wide: it covers supervision of licensing, enforcement, revenue collection and the disciplinary control of subordinate officers. Several specific powers are routed exclusively through the Commissioner elsewhere in the Act - for instance, the grant of passes for certain notified intoxicants under Section 11, the power under Section 12 to deem outside passes valid, and the establishment or licensing of distilleries and warehouses under Section 14. The post is therefore both supervisory and operational, sitting at the top of the hierarchy defined in the definitions and giving content to the term "Excise-officer" in Section 2(7).

The Collector and other officers: Section 7(b), (c)

Section 7(b) allows the State Government to appoint any person other than the Collector to exercise all or any of the powers, and perform all or any of the duties, conferred and imposed on a Collector by or under the Act - either concurrently with, in subordination to, or in exclusion of, the Collector, subject to such control as the Government may direct. This is the device by which dedicated excise officers (Deputy or Assistant Excise Commissioners, District Excise Officers) discharge collector-level functions without disturbing the Collector's general revenue role. The three modes - concurrent, subordinate, exclusive - are deliberately flexible, letting the Government carve out excise work from the Collector's portfolio district by district. Section 7(c) is the foundational appointment power: the Government may appoint officers of the Excise Department of such classes, with such designations, powers and duties as it thinks fit. Together with the definition of "Excise-officer" in Section 2(7) - which means a Collector or any officer or person appointed or invested with powers under the Act - these clauses determine who, in any given case, is lawfully exercising excise authority. A search or seizure by a person not so appointed or invested is without jurisdiction.

Delegation and withdrawal of powers: Section 7(d)-(g)

The remaining clauses of Section 7 govern the flow of authority. Clause (d) lets the Government order that powers and duties assigned to an officer appointed under clause (c) be exercised by any servant of the Government or any other person. Clause (e) permits the State Government to delegate to the Chief Revenue Authority or the Excise Commissioner all or any of its own powers under the Act - with the crucial exception of the rule-making power conferred by Section 62, which cannot be delegated. This carve-out reflects the settled principle that an essential legislative function (subordinate rule-making) is not lightly to be sub-delegated. Clause (f) empowers the Government to withdraw from any officer or person all or any of his powers, so authority is always revocable. Clause (g) is the sub-delegation enabler: it permits the Government to allow further delegation by the Chief Revenue Authority, the Excise Commissioner or the Collector to any specified person or class of persons. A delegate must, however, act strictly within the four corners of the notification empowering him; an act outside the delegated field is ultra vires. Officers exercising delegated power thereby acquire the same protections and liabilities as primary officers, including the offences in Section 49 for vexatious search, seizure or arrest discussed in the offences note.

Flying squads: Section 7A

Section 7A, an inserted provision, empowers the State Government by notification to establish flying squads for investigating any case of alleged or suspected evasion of excise revenue, or any alleged or suspected contravention of the Act or rules, and to specify the area over which a squad has jurisdiction. Sub-section (2) provides that a flying squad consists of excise officers and other persons the Government may appoint, and sub-section (3) states that those officers or persons exercise the powers and perform the duties conferred or imposed under Section 7. The flying squad is therefore not a separate species of officer but a mobile enforcement formation drawing its powers from Section 7. The mention of "investigating" is doctrinally significant: an officer who genuinely investigates suspected offences begins to look like a police officer, which is exactly the question the courts have wrestled with and which is examined below.

Powers exercised by the officers: Sections 8-10

Sections 8 to 10 set out the first substantive controls that the excise machinery administers. Section 8 empowers the State Government, by notification, to prohibit throughout the State or in any specified area the import or export of any intoxicant, to prohibit the transport of any intoxicant, and to make suitable provision for the effective control of mahua (Bassia latifolia and Bassia longifolia) or any other base usable for manufacturing liquor - a clause aimed at choking off illicit distillation at source. Section 9 imposes the general restriction that, without the sanction of the State Government, no intoxicant may be imported, exported or transported except after payment of, or a bond for, any duty leviable, and on compliance with such conditions as the Government may impose. Section 10 adds the quantity-based pass requirement: no intoxicant exceeding the quantity the Government may notify shall be imported, exported or transported except under a pass issued or deemed issued under the Act. These provisions are the statutory hooks on which the enforcement powers in Sections 49 to 54A hang; an officer who finds an intoxicant moving without sanction or pass is dealing with a contravention triable under Section 34. The detailed mechanics are covered in the transport, import and export note and the possession limits note.

Passes and licensing: Sections 11-13

Section 11 vests the grant of passes for import, export or transport of intoxicants in the Collector, with a proviso that passes for the import and export of such intoxicants as the Excise Commissioner may from time to time determine shall be granted only by the Commissioner. Sub-section (2) allows such passes to be general (for defined periods and kinds of intoxicants) or special (for specified occasions and particular consignments). Section 12 lets the Excise Commissioner, by general or special order and subject to conditions, direct that a pass granted by any authority in India shall be deemed a pass for any purpose under the Act - the inter-State recognition mechanism that keeps lawful trade moving across borders. Section 13 opens Chapter IV by requiring a licence for manufacture and allied activities: no intoxicant may be manufactured or collected, no hemp plant cultivated, no tari-producing tree tapped, no liquor bottled for sale, no distillery or brewery constructed or worked, and no person may keep materials or apparatus for manufacturing any intoxicant other than tari, except under a licence, with provisos allowing the Government to relax the rule for tari in notified areas. The progression from Commissioner-and-Collector powers (Sections 11-12) to the licensing prohibition (Section 13) shows how the officer hierarchy of Section 7 directly governs every stage of the intoxicant supply chain.

Is an excise officer a police officer? The Section 25 debate

The most heavily examined consequence of the powers conferred on excise officers is whether they are "police officers" within section 25 of the Evidence Act, because a confession to a police officer is inadmissible. The starting point is State of Punjab v. Barkat Ram, AIR 1962 SC 276, where the Supreme Court held that a customs officer is not a police officer: his dominant duty is to collect revenue and prevent smuggling, not to investigate and prosecute crime, so a confession to him is admissible. The contrary result followed in Raja Ram Jaiswal v. State of Bihar, AIR 1964 SC 828, where the Court held that an Excise Inspector under the Bihar and Orissa Excise Act, 1915 - a statute with a scheme identical to the Chhattisgarh Act - was a police officer, because he was clothed with full powers of investigation, including the power to submit a charge-sheet, making his statement-taking equivalent to police interrogation. The apparent conflict was reconciled in Badku Joti Savant v. State of Mysore, AIR 1966 SC 1746, which laid down the "charge-sheet test": even an officer invested with most powers of an officer in charge of a police station is not a police officer for Section 25 unless he can file a report under Section 173 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Whether a Chhattisgarh excise officer crosses that line turns on the precise powers conferred by the Section 7 notification appointing or investing him - which is why the contents of that notification matter so much in a trial.

The modern position and remand powers

The charge-sheet test was reshaped by Tofan Singh v. State of Tamil Nadu, (2021) 4 SCC 1, where a three-judge bench held that officers invested under the NDPS Act with powers of investigation are "police officers" and that confessional statements recorded under Section 67 of that Act are inadmissible in trial. While Tofan Singh arises under the NDPS Act, it sharpens the inquiry for excise officers: the deeper an officer's investigative footprint - search, arrest, seizure, custodial questioning, prosecution - the closer he edges to police-officer status. A separate but related question is the magistrate's remand power. In Directorate of Enforcement v. Deepak Mahajan, (1994) 3 SCC 440, the Supreme Court held that a Magistrate has jurisdiction under Section 167(2) of the Code to authorise detention of a person arrested by a non-police officer under a special Act. By parity, a person arrested by an excise officer under the arrest powers of the Act (Sections 52 to 54A) can be produced before and remanded by a Magistrate, even though the officer is not, for all purposes, a police officer. The practical lesson is that excise officers exercise quasi-police powers but operate within a distinct statutory framework whose contours are fixed by Section 7 and the appointing notification.

Exam pointers and common errors

Candidates frequently misstate the architecture of Chapter II. Note three things. First, Section 7 - not Section 6 - is the establishment provision; Section 6 is merely a saving clause protecting the Sea Customs Act, the Indian Tariff Act and the Cantonment Act. Second, the rule-making power under Section 62 is the one power the State Government cannot delegate under Section 7(e), a point that often appears as a one-mark trap. Third, the police-officer question is decided not by the label "excise officer" but by the actual investigative powers in the appointing notification, applying the charge-sheet test from Badku Joti Savant as refined by Tofan Singh. Keep Barkat Ram (customs, not police) and Raja Ram Jaiswal (excise inspector with charge-sheet power, police) as the contrasting pair, and remember that Deepak Mahajan preserves the Magistrate's remand jurisdiction regardless of the officer's status. For the bigger picture, read these provisions alongside the introduction and the offences note.