Intra-state e-way bill rolled out in five states from Sunday

E-way bill requirement for intra-state movement of goods has been rolled out in five states from Sunday.

The bill for inter-state movement of goods valued over Rs 50,000 was rolled out on April 1. The Goods and Services Council had decided on a staggered roll out of intra-state e-way bill starting with five states — Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala.

From midnight till 5 pm on Sunday, about 0.24 million e-way bill (both inter state and intra-state) was generated on the portal, an official said.

The official said there was not much increase in the generation of bill on Sunday on account of intra-state roll out.

On the day of inter-state roll out of e-way bill on April 1, about 0.28 million such bills were generated in 24 hours.

The official said one reason for not much increase in the number could be because Gujarat has mandated e-way bill for intra-state movement for only 19 items. These items include edible oil, oil cakes, ceramic tiles, iron and steel, processed tobacco, gutkha, cigarette, cement, timber products, tea, marble and granite.

Since the roll out of e-way bill for inter-state movement of goods from April 1, more than 9.1 million bills have been generated till Saturday. Karnataka is the only state which had rolled out e-way bill system for intra-state movement of goods from April 1.

Touted as an anti-evasion measure and would help boost tax collections by clamping down on trade that currently happens on cash basis, the e-way bill provision of the goods and services tax (GST) was first introduced on February 1.

However, its implementation was put on hold after the system developed glitches in generating permits. With several states also starting to generate intra-state e-way bills on the portal, the system developed a snag.

Since then, the platform has been made more robust so that it can handle load of as many as 75 lakh inter-state e-way bills daily without any glitch.