Ministerial panel on GSTN to meet on Saturday
Aims to fix operational and technical issues of GST IT infra
With a slew of reported glitches in the goods and services tax network (GSTN), the ministerial panel will meet on Saturday in Bengaluru to examine the information technology challenges plaguing the uniform tax regime. The committee, chaired by Sushil Kumar Modi, was constituted earlier this week.
Information technology (IT) major Infosys that has built the goods and services tax network (GSTN) portal is expected to face a volley of questions from the ministerial panel on Saturday in Bengaluru over the IT challenges plaguing the uniform tax regime.
The committee, chaired by Sushil Kumar Modi, deputy chief minister and finance minister of Bihar, was constituted earlier this week after a slew of glitches were reported in filing returns. It was a sequel to the GST Council’s decision last week at Hyderabad, to oversee technical and operational issues pertaining to the IT infrastructure. Infosys is expected to face a barrage of questions from ministers on the problems faced by businesses for registration and filing of returns.
GSTN will give a presentation to the ministers of the work done, challenges and the strategy. The meeting will be attended by its officials and those of IT major Infosys.
“We will try to understand the IT infra issue from a 360-degree perspective. We will review the issues faced by traders and the challenges confronting GSTN. A strategy will be charted after the meeting,” said a state finance minister, part of the five-member panel. New GSTN chairman A B Pandey will attend, as will its chief executive, Prakash Kumar.
The committee was constituted in the wake of complaints from businesses about the glitches in GSTN. Simultaneously, the timeline for filing of returns was extended. The system had crashed last Friday, September 8, two days before the earlier deadline to file detailed sales returns, after a flood of entities tried uploading of invoices. Close to 750,000 returns were filed on Saturday, just before the due date was extended to October 10.
GSTN awarded a contract worth ~1,320 crore to Infosys to build and maintain the technology network crucial for implementing the proposed GST system across the country for five years.
The GSTN is a non-government, private limited company incorporated on March 28, 2013, with a government shareholding of 49 per cent and private shareholding of 51 per cent.
Officials in the government argue that businesses deferring return filing till the last day are also a factor for the panic. “After the announcement of deadline extension, hardly anyone is filing their returns. People have stopped coming now. This mentality needs to change,” said one.
Acknowledging the issue with the system, a finance ministry official said, “Once you start a large system, there will be issues. Forms were finalised in the last week and then there were modifications. Keeping that in mind, GSTN is a stable system but, unfortunately, the system didn’t work on September 8.”
The officials say too many forms, such as GSTR 3B, were introduced at the last minute. “GSTN is trying to do so many things at the same time. Officials are working till four in the morning in trying to fix issues,” said one.
About 2.8 million GSTR-1 or detailed sales returns were filed by Saturday, the earlier deadline. This is about half the expected returns for the month of July. However, traffic on the GSTN portal on Saturday declined significantly from 80,000 users an hour to 17,000 an hour after finance minister Arun Jaitley announced the extension.
The deadline for filing of purchase returns or GSTR-2 and GSTR-3, the matching ones of GSTR-1 and GSTR-2 for July, have also been extended to October 31 and November 10, from September 25 and September 30, respectively. Jaitley had said the decision was taken after the portal got overloaded more than once.