Excise and Prohibition Minister Jupalli Krishna Rao has said that Principal Secretary to his department Syed Ali Murtaza announced voluntary retirement from the services owing to his personal reasons.

Though he lodged a complaint against the official for not adhering to his instructions on calling new tenders for holograms on liquor bottles, the minister said that Murtaza got a lucrative post in a corporate hospital with Rs 10 lakh salary per month.

Addressing the media here on Thursday, Krishna Rao said that he repeatedly instructed the Principal Secretary to call for tenders from new agencies to supply holograms for liquor bottles. But the officials did not obey to his instructions and continued the old agency to supply holograms on nomination basis for the last two years. The agreement between the agency and government ended in 2019 and on nomination basis, the old agency continued to supply the holograms. Since there was also no response from the official on inviting new distilleries, the minister said that the government incurred a loss of Rs 200 crore revenue due to delay in the renewable of the licence of the distilleries.

A decision to call for tender for new distilleries was also delayed for not moving the file by the excise official, Krishna Rao said, raising doubts on the quality of supply of holograms since there were reports of supply of adulterated liquor in some districts. To prevent such incidents, the minister said that he insisted on new agencies.