Tighten GST registration process: FM

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman asked the indirect tax department to further strengthen the GST registration process, using technology to curb fake entities in the ecosystem.

The FM, who chaired a review meeting with the revenue secretary Sanjay Malhotra and the CBIC chairman Vivek Johri, called for a nationwide campaign to explain the special drive to weed out fake entities. Sitharaman was told that 11,140 fake registrations have already been detected and action has been initiated against them. FM was also told about methods being adopted to create fake entities, including identity theft.

Sitharaman took note of the existing measures being undertaken by the finance ministry, such as OTP-based verification of Aadhaar and pilot of biometric based Aadhaar authentication, at the time of registration in high risk cases. Malhotra and Johri apprised the FM about the tools that are being used to tackle the issue of fake entities, including artificial intelligence and machine learning.