Chandigarh, March 28 -- Finance and taxation minister Harpal Singh Cheema on Friday announced that the taxation department has launched a large-scale, coordinated enforcement drive across Punjab to curb tobacco tax evasion, leading to the detection of unaccounted goods estimated at Rs.1.5 crore.

Cheema said that following the recent increase in tax rates on tobacco products such as cigarettes, bidis, and allied items, the department received specific inputs regarding a surge in tax evasion activities within this sector. He added that acting swiftly on this intelligence, teams from four state investigation and preventive units (SIPUs) based in Amritsar, Ludhiana, Patiala, and Jalandhar carried out simultaneous inspections at eight differe...