A government official has stated that the Central government is currently working on to enhance its stake in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Regime to ensure that any data breach or mishappenings don’t occur on the GSTN portal. Currently, the ownership of government in GSTN is 49 percent, whereas the ownership of private financial institution is 51 percent.
According to the officials, an increment of the stake control of Central and State Government in GSTN has been sanctioned by Arun Jaitley, finance minister of India. It seems that ownership would enhance from 49 percent to 60 percent in GSTN, primarily to make sure that the ownership of private institutions which handles IT infrastructure and systems related to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) should be handed over to the state.
The demand to increase the stake control of the state is pending from a long time period owing to encouraging fears that informative and sensitive GST data should not be handed over to private entities. Some of the political parties including Bharatiya Janata Party have raised the question that how can government hand over control of critical informative data to the private institutions.
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The officials stated that Arun Jaitley, who came back home after taking the proper medical treatment and might undergo surgery in the coming weeks, has started checking files. He suggested that the GSTN data should be a repository to the government provided by the companies so that there is no fear of losing such informative data.
Currently, the ownership pattern at GSTN comprises Central Government (24.5%), State Government (24.5%), HDFC (10%), HDFC Bank (10%), ICICI Bank (10 %), NSE Strategic Investment Company (10%) and LIC Housing Finance Limited (11%). GSTN has been established by the government to render IT infrastructure and services to the Central, State Governments, taxpayers, and other stakeholders for the execution of Goods and Services Tax (GST) Regime. The Authorised Capital of the GSTN is Rs. 10 crores and its chairman is Ajay Bhushan Pandey.