Chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday said there was a consistent increase in Goods and Services Tax (GST) and Value Added Tax (VAT) collections in the state despite Covid-19 challenges. The collections went up from ₹58,000 crore in 2017-2018 to about ₹1 lakh crore in 2021-2022 in Uttar Pradesh, he said.
Yogi, along with his council of ministers, was viewing the presentations of revenue earning departments here. He also said public welfare programmes were being implemented with the increase in the state’s income. Besides the increase in size of the state’s budget, the per capita income had also gone up, the chief minister said.
These were public funds and would be used for the public welfare, Yogi said.
U.P TOPS IN GST RETURNS
Yogi said Uttar Pradesh was on top in terms of filing GST returns. Awareness campaign should be stepped up to get more traders registered under the GST, he said. Yogi said the campaign should be taken further by communicating with traders’ organisations and bar associations. One Time Settlement scheme should be launched for quick disposal of GST cases, he suggested. He said refund claims of exporters should be disposed of on priority. There was a need to strengthen the GST audit and traders should be selected on the basis of business intelligence tools developed by GSTN, he added.
Tax evasion should be checked using artificial intelligence and other technology, Yogi said.
Yogi said there was a need to work more to check pilferage in GST and VAT. Besides awareness programmes, enforcement drives should also be launched for the purpose, he said.
GST TRIBUNAL
Yogi said detailed action plan should be worked out for setting up of GST tribunal. He said all pending VAT appeals should be disposed of and efforts should be made to make the first appeal faceless. All documents should be digitized and a settlement scheme should be brought for waiver of interest in stamp disputes, he said.
Stamp duty on rental documents of houses should be rationalized, he added.
MINING SECTOR
Alleging loot in the mining sector during the previous government, he said work had been done in a transparent manner in the past five years. There was a 250% increase in total revenue collections of about ₹14,000 crore in the sector between 2012-2017 and 2017-2022.
New mining areas should be included in district survey report by getting mineral mapping of main rivers done in Bundelkhand and Purvanchal in the next six months, the chief minister said.
A 24 x 7 call centre should be set up to register complaints about illegal mining.
ACTION AGAINST BOOTLEGGERS
The chief minister asked for strict action against those manufacturing and selling illicit liquor.
A syndicate ruled the excise department for decades but the same has been brought to an end now, he said.
He said stamps and registration department would have to focus on increasing revenue and efforts would have to be made to eliminate middlemen in the offices of registrars.
TRANSPORT DEPT REFORMS
He underlined the need to bring about reforms in the transport department.
Efforts should be made to set up good bus stations under public private partnership model, he said and added that plying of illegal buses should be stopped completely. The recent Ghaziabad school bus incident was sad and responsibility be fixed on transport officer besides taking action against others responsible for the same, he said.
A weeklong statewide campaign should be launched to check fitness of school buses and all aspects should be examined, he added.
UPSRTC FLEET
He said more than 26,000 villages have been linked to the UPSRTC bus service in the past five years. The process should be stepped up to include 2000 contractual and 5000 new buses in the UPSRTC fleet, he added.
RECONSTRUCTION OF CINEMA HALLS
The chief minister said reconstruction of multiplexes and cinema halls should be encouraged. He also said applications under integrated promotion scheme for upgradation of cinema halls should be disposed of.
TRADERS’ WELFARE
Yogi said efforts have been made for welfare of traders in the past five years. A traders’ welfare board was constituted and accident insurance cover has been increased to ₹10 lakh in 2018. He said more such decisions should be taken in accordance with needs of traders.