Piyush Goyal: West Bengal govt should stop hawala transactions

Piyush Goyal/AFP

Union Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on Monday said West Bengal government should act immediately to stop illegal transactions after state Finance Minister Amit Mitra had recently claimed that hawala dealings had seen a rise due to failure of GST's automatic digitised process. Referring to soaring Indian deposits in Swiss banks, Mitra had claimed "hawala transactions have increased due to the failure of the GST's automatic digitised process".

"They should stop it immediately in West Bengal. I wish Mitra would act quickly to stop all these illegal transactions," Goyal told reporters here, while responding to a query. According to the design of the indirect tax system, GSTR 1, which is a form to be filled and uplinked, represents sales value figures, while GSTR 2 forms, which represent purchase figures, are self-populated, said Mitra, who is also a member of the GST Council.

But, he said, a short form GSTR 3B was introduced and that form was "not backed by invoices". "Here, I make a claim. As a result of (GSTR 3B) not being backed by invoices, not only are we going completely manual, hawala transactions have increased massively, according to our studies... because you are not putting invoices and there is no way to check it," Mitra earlier added.

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