FM asks tax officers to strengthen GST registration process further by using technology

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday asked tax officers to strengthen the GST registration process further by using technology during a review meeting on fake registration and billing. Tax officers have identified 11,140 fake GST registration and initiated action against fraudsters in the ongoing two-month-long special drive launched on May 16.

"Smt @nsitharaman instructed that the GST registration process may be further strengthened using technology to curb entry of such fake entities in GST ecosystem. The FM called for a nationwide campaign to explain the objectives of the special drive to weed out fake entities," the office of the Finance Minister said in a tweet.

During the review meeting, which was also attended by Revenue Secretary Sanjay Malhotra and CBIC Chairman Vivek Johri, Sitharaman was apprised of the methods like identity theft of people being adopted by fraudsters.


"Smt @nsitharaman took note of the existing measures being undertaken by the ministry like OTP-based verification of Aadhar and pilot of biometric-based Aadhar authentication at the time of registration in high-risk cases," the tweet added.

The Revenue Secretary and CBIC Chairman apprised the finance minister that AI/ML (Artificial Intelligence/ Machine Learning) tools are being extensively used to identify possible fake networks.