Indore: Chief commissioner, CGST, assures attempts to be made to set up GST appellate tribunal in city

Indore (Madhya Pradesh): Navneet Goyal, chief commissioner of the Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST), MP-CG, has given the assurance that the attempts will be made to set up a GST appellate tribunal in the city. Although it was to become operational in the state along with the roll-out of GST in July 2017, it has not been set up even after five years.

Goyal held out this assurance at the first meeting of the newly constituted state-level GST Grievance Redressal Committee in Bhopal on Thursday. State GST commissioner Lokesh Kumar Jatav from the city and CGST officer Dheeraj Rastogi from New Delhi joined the meeting virtually. Twenty members of the committee were present at the meeting.

Senior member of the committee and president of the Ahilya Chamber of Commerce and Industries Ramesh Khandelwal raised the issue, highlighting that, in the absence of declining of a first appeal, aggrieved parties do not have the opportunity to make a second appeal, which may be done at the tribunal. But, in the absence of the tribunal, they have to move to the high court for a second appeal, which is a costly affair for small traders. Khandelwal also pleaded that, since the highest GST is being collected from the city, the tribunal Bench should also be set up here. Khandelwal also demanded that the issue of cancellation of the GST number should be disposed of within seven days.

Advocate Ashwin Lakhotia, another member of the committee, said he demanded the facility of filing of a revised return, which was present in the earlier VAT regime, too. He said senior IRS Goyal had given the assurance that a recommendation to consider it would also be sent.

These issues were also raised:

The period of drawing of the ITC should be extended from 2 years to 3 years.

A physical copy of the notice from the department should be sent besides sending e-mail.

A mechanism should be developed to avoid sending notice on the same issue from both the SGST and CGST departments.