-By Tejas Goenka, Executive Director, Tally Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

There are 4 primary stakeholders who are involved in the e-way bill process – suppliers, recipients, transporters and tax officers. While suppliers, recipients, and transporters are involved in the business end – seeing that the consignment of goods moves from source to destination without any difficulty, the tax officers are involved in the administration end – seeing that the consignment of goods is accounted for via e-way bill by both parties.

It is imperative for all these stakeholders to obtain the registration to the e-way bill portal, which the government has opened up a few days back on trial basis. While registered businesses can obtain registration on the e-way bill portal with their GSTIN, even unregistered transporters can obtain registration on the e-way bill portal with their business details and obtain a Transporter ID or Trans ID, which they can provide to their clients to be mentioned on the e-way bills generated.

Under GST, for movement of goods having consignment value more than Rs 50,000, it is mandatory to generate E-way Bill. With multiple parties involved in the movement of goods – Supplier, Recipient and Transporter – now the question arises, who should generate the E-way bill?
Also, the E-way bill ‘Form EWB-01’ contains two parts. Part-A contains the details of the consignment and Part-B contains the vehicle number in which the goods are transported. Again, the question arises, who should furnish the details in Part-A and Part-B of Form EWB-01?
In this blog, we will discuss about the entity who should be generating the E-way bill and also, who should bear the responsibility of furnishing the details in Part-A and Part-B of Form EWB-01.

Who should generate E-way Bill?
The responsibility to generate the E-way bill differs according to business circumstances. For example, you may transport the goods on your own vehicle or you may hand over the goods to the transporter and so on. Let us discuss the responsibility to generate E-way bill under different business scenarios:

For some reason, if the supplier or recipient do not generate or furnish the details in E-way bill and if the value of consignment is more than Rs 50,000, the ultimate responsibility to generate the E-way bill lies with the transporter. On the basis of Invoice, Delivery challan or Bill of Supply, the transporter needs to generate the E-way bill Form EWB-01.