How to become an Excise Inspector?

Staff Selection Commission (SSC) through its Combined Graduate Level (CGL) Examination held every year recruits candidates in Excise Inspector posts. The Excise Inspectors are the officers who deal with Excise Duty related matters and work under Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC). CBEC is a part of the Department of Revenue under the Ministry of Finance, Government of India. It deals with the tasks of formulation of policy concerning levy and collection of Customs & Central Excise duties and Service Tax, prevention of smuggling and administration of matters relating to Customs, Central Excise, Service Tax and Narcotics to the extent under CBEC's purview. The Board is the administrative authority for its subordinate organizations, including Custom Houses, Central Excise and Service Tax Commissionerates and the Central Revenues Control Laboratory.

Role of Excise Inspector:  It is one of the most sought after posts by the candidates with respect and honor associated with the position. The Excise Inspectors working in the field need to be strong, brave, hardworking and tactical in order to handle the work pressure and delve out results whenever required. The government revenue depends largely in the revenue generated by the department through the excise and custom taxes. Thus the excise inspectors need to be active and work to the core in order to make sure that the constant inflow of taxes and revenue of the Government doesn’t get stalled. It is quite a tricky position to hold as the candidates might have to face a varied number of influential people and deal with them accordingly.

Selection Process of the examination: In order to be become Excise Inspector in the department concerned the candidates need to undergo the SSC (CGL) Examination. The examination is threefold consisting prelims and mains written examination along with personal interview round of the candidates. The candidates need to pass the prelims examination with adequate cut off marks in order to scale up to the mains written examination which is way tougher and critical than the prelims examination. Upon clearing the Mains written examination the candidates would have to undergo personal interview round. The candidates would be finally selected based on their marks attained in the mains examination and personal interview round conducted by the concerned recruitment authority. The candidates applying for the post need to have Graduation Degree in any particular stream from any recognized institute/university in India. They should be in the age of 18 to 27 years in order to become eligible for the recruitment process. The reservation for OBC candidates would be 3 years and for SC/ST candidates it is set to be 5 years.

The total marks in the prelims examination is 200 for which the candidates get a time of 2 hours. The questions asked in preliminary examination is MCQ based. In the Mains examination the candidates need to face 5 papers namely: General Studies, English, Arithmetic, Language, Communication Skill and writing. The total marks in the examination are 800 and carries both objective and subjective questions. Upon successful selection in the mains written examination by scoring the cut off marks the candidates are called for personal interview round. In the personal interview round the candidates are tested mentally by the recruitment authority. Upon clearing this final hurdle successfully the candidates could get posted as Excise Inspector under the CBEC. The Excise Inspector can rise up in the rank and end up becoming Excise Commissioner as time passes.