The Directorate General of Central Excise Intelligence (DGCEI), a wing of the department of revenue in the finance ministry, has booked at least a dozen odd industrial units in Delhi and UP for alleged duty evasion to the tune of Rs 400 crore.

The huge evasion is just a pointer to the extent of excise duty the government has to forego every year due to industries indulging in largescale under-invoicing.

Already, the Central Board of Excise and Customs, the parent body of DGCEI, has issued directives to all its field formations to compare state VAT data with duty receipts to evaluate productions and inputs used by a unit to assess the actual duty payable by units.

The efforts have started paying results. For instance, in the current drive of DGCEI, intelligence and enforcement officials raided and seized documents from packaging industries in Delhi and UP.

The seized papers revealed duty evasion to the tune of Rs 100 crore on the supplies made by these industries to gutka and tobacco units in Kanpur.