Centre acknowledges systemic flaws in GST e-way bill system, outlines corrective steps

New Delhi: The Union government on Tuesday said there were systemic deficiencies in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) e-way bill mechanism, which were pointed out by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, and spelt out corrective measures already taken to rectify the lapses.

Responding to an unstarred question in the Rajya Sabha by Trinamool Congress MP Ritabrata Banerjee, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said the government has taken note of irregularities in the system, including generation of multiple e-way bills for the same invoice, issuance of e-way bills by non-filers and generation by cancelled GST identification numbers (GSTINs).

He said that hitherto, several e-way bills were being generated against a single invoice due to minor variations such as the use of upper-case and lower-case characters while entering document details.

The new system validations developed to plug this loophole now prohibit the use of the same document number with the same date for generating more than one e-way bill on the e-way bill portal.

Similarly, documents older than 180 days are no longer allowed for e-way bill generation.

On the issue of the e-way bill generated by non-filers, the government said the system already blocked the generation of e-way bills for taxpayers who had not filed their previous three GST returns. The portal would now automatically verify the filing status of a taxpayer before allowing any e-way bill to be issued.

The minister, while responding to concerns about e-way bills being generated using cancelled GSTINs, pointed out that the required validations with respect to the status of GST registration are in place. In case a GSTIN has been cancelled, the system auto-disallows generation of any e-way bill by or against that

number.

The government’s response comes against the backdrop of the CAG highlighting vulnerabilities in the digital compliance infrastructure under GST that may be misused for tax evasion or fraudulent movement of goods. Officials maintained that continuous system upgrades and tighter validations are being carried out to strengthen the integrity of the e-way bill mechanism-a critical tool for tracking inter-State and intra-State movement of goods under the indirect

tax regime.