Traders are not the only ones struggling to maintain the compliance with the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in India. Even the government is finding it difficult to manage so many transactions in so little time. This is pretty reasonable given that GST is a newly launched system and will take time to adjust, however, it doesn’t explain why the CBEC (CBIC) is doing nothing to fill the nearly 2,000 (1980 to be exact) officers’ seats which are vacant in the department.
The response to an RTI query regarding the various posts in the CBEC offices asked by Sanjay Thul, who is a social worker, has revealed that the Central Board of Excise and Customs (Central Excise) currently has 1980 vacant positions of top officials for tasks related to GST. The vacancies include multiple posts of assistant, additional and principal GST commissioners.
The query was responded by Virendra Arora, who is central public information officer (CPIO) and assistant director. He informed that about 3,840 positions are occupied out of the total 5,788 positions while 1,980 were still vacant by March 31, 2018.
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Thul, in his RTI query, has also asked about the measures the Central Board is taking to fill up the vacant posts in its departments. However, he did not receive a reply to this query. The CPIO responded by saying that information asked in the query doesn’t fall under the RTI Act, 2005.
In his reply, Arora also mentioned that the most vacancies are in the grade of commissioners, including the chief, principal, deputy and assistant commissioners. Only two out of 14 sanctioned chief commissioner posts are filled up by now, while 77 out of 99 sanctioned posts of principal commissioners are still vacant.
GST has been widely regarded as the biggest tax reform India has faced since Independence. It is obvious that it would take time to adjust to the system.
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