December 4, 2025
Rajya Sabha MP Sagarika Ghose’s speech on The Central Excise (Amendment) Bill, 2025
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Sir. On behalf of the All India Trinamool Congress Party, I rise to speak on the Central Excise Amendment) Bill, 2025. Sir, this is the first time I am speaking when you are in the Chair. So, I take this opportunity to convey my greetings to you from all of us. Sir, a brief word on procedure. Today, the Supplementary List of Business was given to us just 30 seconds before the House started. The House started at 11.00 a.m. and the Supplementary List of Business arrived just a few seconds before the House started. What kind of procedure is this? If you do not give us any time to study the Bills, how can we prepare ourselves for substantive interventions during the discussion in the House? This procedure must be introspected by the Government.Sir, the Central Excise (Amendment) Bill, 2025 revises taxes and cesses on tobacco and tobacco products. There is no doubt that it is an extremely important Bill. It is actually crucial from a public health standpoint because higher taxes may, and, I use the word ‘may’ advisedly, discourage tobacco consumption. The use of tobacco and tobacco products results in mouth cancer, lung cancer and other fatal cancers. There were over 15 lakh cases of cancer across the country in 2024 alone from tobacco use. With regard to oral cancer, there were 1,30,000 new male cases in 2024, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research. Lung cancer cases are projected to increase from 63,708 cases in 2015 to 81,209 cases in 2025. Most of the patients, when they come with these forms of cancer, come with an advanced form of the diseases, and, 80 to 85 per cent of the cases are incurable, causing nearly 60,000 deaths from lung cancer alone. Yet, the point must be made that even if you increase taxes on tobacco and tobacco products, what are you doing from the public health policy point of view to raise awareness and disseminate urgent information on the harmful effects of consuming tobacco? What are you doing from the public health perspective because just by raising taxes, it is not going to discourage people from smoking or consuming tobacco products? People who are addicted to tobacco, who consume tobacco products, will consume them anyway, even if you keep raising taxes. We have seen that the Government is not taking any steps to control the pan masala, and tobacco advertisements are being done by celebrities and influencers across media. What is the Government doing to control these kinds of advertising? If you keep raising taxes, but do not do anything for health, people are still going to consume tobacco, whether you raise taxes or not. You claim that increasing taxes on tobacco discourages consumption, but public health allocation details are missing. Global best practices show that tobacco taxes are most effective only when paired with strong public health interventions. Therefore, this Bill is a revenue move. It is a pure and simple revenue move. It is not a public health reform. This is a revenue move to profiteer on taxes. It is not a public health reform.Sir, ours is a federal system of governance, and the cornerstone of the federal polity is transparency in allocation of tax revenues. Taxes are shared with States, but cess is not. Cess revenue is not shared with States. In cess, the Centre retains more revenue while the States get less. This raises important questions on fiscal centralization and reduced autonomy of States. In this Bill, there is no clarity on long-term revenue sharing or impact on States which undermines trust in the tax-cess restructuring. In 2012, cess formed 7 per cent of the Union Government’s total tax revenues. In 2025, cess is estimated to be about 20 per cent of the Union Government’s total tax revenues. This means that for every 100 rupees, the Union Government earns rupees 20 via cess. A Controller and Auditor General report exposed that in 2018-19, the Union Government withheld one lakh crore of the 2.75 lakh crore collected through various cesses in the Consolidated Fund of India or the CFI. Rupees 10,000 crore of the road and infrastructure cess collected during the year was, I quote, “neither transferred to the related reserve fund nor utilized for the purpose for which the cess was collected.” More alarmingly, Rs. 1.24 lakh crore collected as cess on crude oil in the past one decade had not been transferred to the designated reserve fund, Oil Industry Development Board, and was retained in CFI. The report further states that non-creation, non-operation of reserve funds makes it difficult to ensure that cesses and levies have been utilized for the specific purposes intended by the Parliament. What are the cesses and levies being used for? Where is transparency? Where is accountability on the part of the Central Government in the cesses and levies that it is collecting? In the early 1980s, the Sarkaria Commission recommended that cesses and surcharges should be levied for a specific period only and for a limited time period only. In 2010, the Punchhi Commission stated that extension of cesses and surcharge amounts to dilution of the recommendations of the Finance Commissions and deprive the States of their due share in central tax revenue. Rupees 5.7 lakh crore of cess and surcharge has been lying unutilized since 2019. Sir, the Bill’s tax-cess structure centralizes revenue with the Union Government and reduces potential revenue for the States. It lacks transparency in how the cess will be used, raising extremely grave and serious concerns about federalism and the dues of States as well as accountability of the Central Government. We know that this Government does not practise cooperative federalism; it practises discriminatory federalism. There is no accountability on how the cess will be shared. The sharp excise hike in the Bill will hit the poorest producers first. These are small farmers, beedi units and tribal communities. The Bill raises excise on all unmanufactured tobacco from 64 per cent to 70 per cent, increasing input costs for small producers and pushing thousands of MSMEs and beedi manufacturers into distress. For Adivasi tendu leaf collectors, women beedi rollers and small growers across Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand and Bihar, this translates into direct income loss and a serious blow to their traditional livelihoods. Excise duty accounts for five per cent of the Union Government’s revenue. As per the RBI, the divisible pool between the States and the Centre has shrunk from 89 per cent of gross tax revenue in 2011 to 79 per cent in 2021. This despite the ten per cent increase in tax devolution to States as recommended by the 14th Finance Commission. There is no transparency in this Bill on how revenues are going to be shared between the States and the Centre. This is a Bill which is going to increase fiscal centralisation. It is going to deprive the States of revenue. It is going to deprive the States of autonomy. It is increasing the unaccountable Centre’s powers over monopoly of tax revenues, monopoly of cess.“Lastly, Sir… let me speak a little in Bengali. I know that the Central Government does not understand Bengali. Still, let me speak in Bengali. I am speaking in Bengali, but when I speak in Bengali, perhaps they will call me ‘Bangladeshi’. Because they call the Bengali language the ‘Bangladeshi language.’ The Delhi Police under the Central Government has stated in a notice that there is a language called ‘Bangladeshi,’ you know. They are saying there is a ‘Bangladeshi’ language, that migrant workers supposedly speak the ‘Bangladeshi’ language. I am speaking in Bengali; perhaps they will call me Bangladeshi and drive me away. Anyway, Sir, those who are workers, those who work in tobacco factories, those who work in homes, all of them, they all want one thing, Sir: ‘wages’. They should receive wages every month. If they don’t get wages, how will the household run? How will they raise their children? How will they eat? How will they send their children to school? What will they do without wages, Sir? What will the workers do if they are not getting wages? Sir, MGNREGA workers in Bengal have not received their wages since 2022. Nearly two lakh crore rupees are due to the State of West Bengal from the Union Government across various schemes. Sir, why are you holding back Bengal’s money? Why are you depriving Bengal? Stop the humiliation of Bengal! Why have you kept Bengal’s money held up?” Sir, this Government is withholding the MGNREGA workers’ wages. People are suffering because this Government has not released the wages of MGNREGA workers. Stop this neglect of Bengal. Stop the humiliation of Bengal! Thank you, Sir. Vande Mataram! Jai Hind! Joy Bangla!
