The government’s decision to make some changes to the e-way bill system effective November 16, 2018, has not gone down well with transporters, who claim that it has not been communicated properly and has led to ‘complete confusion’.

Transit delay

“When A sells a material to B, he raises an invoice and subsequently prepares an e-way bill. While on transit, if the vehicle breaks down or is delayed for some reason, then the original e-way bill expires. In the new system, there is no option for the transporter to move the material. System has been blocked [if you want to] raise another e-way bill with the same invoice details. This has led to complete confusion among transporters,” said Abhishek Gupta, chairman, legal & GST committee, Bombay Goods Transport Association (BGTA).

With changes made by the National Informatics Centre which is handling the e-way bill project, the system has been formatted in such a way that if the consignor has generated one e-way bill on a particular invoice, then none will be allowed to generate one more e-way bill on the same invoice number.

If the transporter or consignee has generated one e-way bill on the consignor’s invoice and if any other party tries to generate the e-way bill, the system will alert about the existence of an e-way bill for that invoice.

Mr. Gupta alleged that penalties for mistakes on tax paid material was mounting and tax officials were concerned only about meeting their targets. “At this rate, transportation business is becoming unviable,” Mr. Gupta said.

“Instead of making the process easier, new rules have made it more complicated. As I maintained earlier, if the sole purpose of the e-way bill is to stop GST evasion, it is rather much more effective to put stringent, robust and expedited compliance mechanisms in place,” said Rohit Chaturvedi, founder & CEO, TransportHub.