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Gujarat govt transfers 36 officials for ‘fair probe’ into Rs 1,000 cr fake GST bill case
In connection with a case involving more than Rs 1,000 crore of fake GST (Goods and Services Tax) bills in Bhavnagar, the Gujarat government on Friday transferred 36 officials from Bhavnagar ranging from the deputy state tax commissioner to employees as junior as a clerk. The move is to ensure a fair probe into the case where 11 persons have already been arrested in the last month.
Deputy chief minister Nitin Patel in an official statement made the announcement about the transfers made in Bhavnagar so that the “investigations remain unaffected” and the “records are not tampered with.”
A senior official from the state commercial tax department told The Indian Express, “These transfers are part of a fresh case that was detected about a month back where more than Rs 1,000 crore of fake billing racket was unearthed by the department.”
About 11 persons have already been arrested in this case. “They had used fake firms to generate bogus bills and took input tax credit on the same, thus defrauding the state government,” the official added.
Talking about the move of the government to transfer 36 senior and junior officials from Bhavnagar, the official said the government wants to ensure that the documents related to the case are not tampered with and a fair probe is conducted. “We want to get to the root of the matter. The idea is to investigate fairly and see if there has been the involvement of any officials, the official added.
Without informing local officials of the department, the state GST department had conducted raids in Bhavnagar almost a month ago. These raids were carried at 60 different places in Bhavnagar including those belonging to Madhav Copper Ltd by 80-odd officials from Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, and Rajkot.
