GST dept. gets more facilities

The State Goods and Services Tax (GST) Department is gearing up to check the filing of returns using fake address, bogus registration and strengthening of the intelligence wing to curb tax evasion.

For improving the Information and Technology facilities, the government has provided ₹35.5 lakh. Another ₹2.35 crore for the procurement of 1,191 tablets for use of GST officials and ₹1.93 crore for facilitating vehicle mounted surveillance cameras and GPS tracking of the squad vehicles of the intelligence wing.

The government has given administrative sanction for ₹78,381,70 for the projects mooted by the department for the year 2020-2021 and had asked to complete the three components of the project by this financial year, official sources said.

Keltron is the Total Solution Provider and the project will be executed through them.

The replacement of obsolete and non-functional equipment, setting up of regional training laboratories, data analytics development and hardware and software development will be taken up using the ₹35.5 lakh.

The department has already installed Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras at major check-posts to verify e-way bill compliance of goods vehicles. The facility was introduced to save time at check-posts.

E-way bill is the system of bill generation to monitor the movement of goods above ₹50,000 from the point of manufacture to the seller. The sender of the consignment has to prepare the e-way bill.