In the region, Punjab has earned the unfortunate distinction of having the highest amount of fraud in Goods and Services Tax (GST) registration over the last six years. The fraudulent cases involved misusing PAN or Aadhaar details of others to claim input tax credit (ITC), amounting to more than Rs 515 crore.

Authorities in Punjab have managed to recover only Rs 32 crore from the fraudsters in 160 such cases up to the current date. In comparison, the neighboring state of Haryana has a higher number of fraudulent cases (265), but the total amount of fraud is Rs 230 crore, with only Rs 2 crore recovered so far.

Delhi leads the country in detected GST fraud, with a staggering amount of Rs 4,326 crore, followed by Rajasthan (Rs 4,266 crore) and Maharashtra (Rs 3,889 crore).

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In the last five years, the highest number of 3,454 GST invoice fraud cases in the region were detected in Haryana. The central GST identified fraud worth Rs 12,488 crore across Haryana during 2019-20 to 2022-23. Haryana ranks third in the country for the highest number of GST invoice fraud cases, trailing behind Maharashtra (Rs 30,013 crore) and Delhi (Rs 14,901 crore).

On Monday, Union Minister of State for Finance, Pankaj Chaudhary, shared these details in the Lok Sabha. He informed that during the recent drive against fake registration by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs, 9,369 bogus entities were identified across the country between May 16 and July 9. These entities were involved in a fraud of Rs 10,902 crore through the misuse of PAN or Aadhaar details.

To tackle such fraudulent cases, Chaudhary stated that, following the recommendations of the GST council, a new sub-rule (4A) has been added to rule 8 of CGST Rules, 2017. This sub-rule provides for risk-based biometric-based Aadhaar authentication of registration applicants, and a trial project is underway in three states and union territories. Additionally, various amendments have been made in the CGST Rules, 2017 to allow for physical verification in high-risk cases, as well as the use of robust data analytics and artificial intelligence to identify and track risky taxpayers and detect tax evasion. Furthermore, a special all-India drive to weed out fake or bogus registrations is periodically conducted.

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