Volume 15 | Issue 13
Monday, November 23, 2015
Excise dept pledges probe over bribes claims Oindrila Sarkar Excise commissioner Umashankar SR is investigating officers in his own department who had been accused of accepting bribes to turn a blind eye to the fake goods market. Private detective agencies in the city have complained that they struggle to act on behalf of global brands to stamp out counterfeit goods in the city as Excise Dept staff agents alert bootleggers to upcoming raids. Bangalore has a thriving market in counterfeit goods, from designer handbags to cigarettes. When asked about allegations of corruption within his department, Umashankar SR
said, “Complaints have been coming in for quite some time now and they are being investigated. If there are further complaints we will act accordingly.” Debraj, the CEO of Detectives’ Bureau, a private firm based in Bangalore, has alleged that excise department officials have been accepting bribes from counterfeiters and allowing them to function freely. He said, “We have raided markets where fake Reebok shoes were being sold. We recently raided a place in Tannery Road and recovered hundreds of fake Reeboks which would otherwise have found a place in proper retail shops in the market.
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“Even the showrooms are keeping a mixed collection of fake and originals. We are facing an informer problem because the State Excise Department are in league with the people who feed their officers with bribes. They are not helping any law enforcement agency.” Bangalore is being flooded with fake goods. Reputed global brands have been hiring private investigation services to crack down on the menace. Umashankar said, “Brands from liquor, textiles and other fast moving consumer goods are being counterfeited everywhere but Bangalore has become the hub of liquor counterfeiting by bootleggers. “Cheap local-made liquor is
being put into branded bottles and sold in good shops.” He added, “You will not be able to differentiate between the two since they collect and use discarded bottles of the original brands.” They are being produced in places like Dharwad and Kolar and sold in Bangalore, he added. Somashekhara, CEO of ISPY Investigation and Security Services, said, “The JC Road and SR Road markets in Bangalore have become hotbeds of fake automobile emblems. Fake emblems and parts of Bajaj, Maruti Suzuki, Mahindra, Ashok Leyland and Mercedes are sold there. We raided the shops selling fake Mercedes emblems as Mer-
Along with the local police we did the biggest raid in September for Louis Vuitton in Bomanahalli..
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- Kevin John, Enforcers of Intellectual Property Rights (EIPR) in Bangalore
cedes is one of our biggest clients.” Kevin John, regional head of the Mumbai-based Enforcers of Intellectual Property Rights (EIPR) in Bangalore, said, “Along with the local police, we did the biggest raid in September for Louis Vuitton in Bommannahalli in Bangalore. From the raid, we seized over 600 bedsheets worth at least Rs.9 lakh.” Earlier smaller raids had been undertaken in Majestic and S.R Road markets. Louis Vuitton, which does not have an outlet outside UB City, found that products which it did not deal in were also carrying their brand name. The Bommannahalli raid recovered thousands of items including bedsheets, blankets along with mobile pouches, belts, purses. The commissioner Umashankar said: “We are trying to stop these incidents from happening and right now we are investigating a counterfeit manufacturing unit in Mysore who are supplying to Bangalore. “People cannot differentiate between originals and counterfeits and the Excise Department is incurring a lot of losses owing to this.”
Schoolkids paying the price for audit delays Tanay Sukumar School students across the state have only one school uniform because the finance department has yet to release funds for a second set. The money for a second uniform is usually released by June but audit issues have led to the five-month delay, according to an official in Sarva
dry a single set in constant rain, with Bangalore receiving more rain in November than it has since 1916. The mother of a third-standard student in a Bangalore government primary school said, “My children are new in school, so they have only one set. They wear the same uniform every day. I don’t wash it until the weekend because
Office of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), a union government scheme that promises universal education. Meanwhile, children face scolding at school if they turn up in anything other than school uniform and their parents face having to wash and
there is no other option.” If the children wear anything else because this set has gone for a wash, they get punished, she said. K. Beena, chief accounts officer, SSA, said that the state finance department has refused
to give funds before it finishes its audit process of SSA. When the SSA receives those funds, it will pass it on to schools. Beena said: “It has been delayed this year. We have asked the state government to release some Rs.100 crore. Butit is still stuck with the finance department.” One set of uniform for students is provided by the state’s education department, and the second set is given under the SSA project by August every academic year. The first set was given earlier this year by the education department. Beena added: “By financial year 2014-15, some excess funds had been accumulated by SSA. We surrendered these excess funds to the finance department in January 2015. But they wanted to have an audit. They said that till this is done, they will not release any funds.” Correspondence is still going on between the finance department and SSA to resolve the issue, she said. Arvind Shrivastava, secretary (budget and resources) to the government in the finance
Students in a Bangalore government school during recess department, refused to talk about the status of the audit. He said: "It is the SSA’s audit. They should know the status. The auditors go from our side, but it is the SSA’s audit report, and they should share it with the public.” Both the central government and the state’s finance department contribute to the SSA funding. But the central government funds reach the SSA only through the state’s finance department. So SSA has received neither the central funds nor the state funds yet, said Beena.
She said: “For the next six months, we will be in a crunch situation because no funds have been released to us.” She hopes they will receive funds by the end of this month. In past years, the funds for second sets of uniform reached schools in the beginning of the academic year, by August or September, said Shailaja, principal of a government higher primary school in Bangalore. She confirmed that this year, funds for the first set of uniform were received by the school, but not for the second set.