Indian Revenue Association seeks cadre review, better GST council representation

The Indian Revenue Association (Customs & Central Excise) met on September 12 and passed a following resolution for the meeting of a number of demands.

They called on Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to intervene and resolve their issues.

The four demands made by the IRA were as follows:

1) The cadre review for the staff and officers of Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) has been conducted in October 2014. Since the cadre restructuring has been done less than two years back by the union cabinet, therefore, no post of the organisation should be reduced considering the huge workload and revenue collection challenges ahead.

2) If any posts are diverted outside CBEC, it should be encadred to the IRS (C&CE) service and to be filled by IRS (C&CE) officers only.

3) Since revenue collection of CGST and IGST is to be handled by IRS (C&CE), the following posts in the GST Council Secretariat should be from IRS (C&CE) by encadrement:

(i) Secretary to the GST Council (to be held by an officer of the rank of Member, CBEC).

(ii) Addl. Secy, to the Council be filled in by an officer of CBEC in the HAG pay scale.

(iii) 50 percent posts at the level of Joint Secretary, Directors & Under Secretary should be held by IRS(C&CE) Officials.

4) Management of GSTN be entrusted to DG systems of CBEC, as GSTN is a newly created SPV, which does not have any experience in implementing any IT project or domain knowledge in Indirect Tax laws. Since GSTN is funded by the Central and state Government, there is no justification in entrusting the management of GSTN to private individuals with heavy salary and allowances. DG systems has experience of implementing Mega Pan-India IT projects for over twenty years and has the necessary domain knowledge and expertise to manage GSTN.