Teething issues in e-way bills, say transporters

Customers are required to update the bill if the transporter is changing the vehicle during the submission of goods. According to transporters, this is a time-consuming process and has invited numerous penalty cases for them. They further add that any errors in updating the bill affects the goods movement, which in turn delays the process.

“We have witnessed at least 1,000 such cases on a daily basis where the transporter is bearing the onus of any error with the e-way bill details. In goods movement, we tend to either change the vehicle or carry additional goods not mentioned in the bill sometimes. However, if the bill does not mention those changes, we get penalised,” a senior goods transporter told The Indian Express. The issues comes after the implementation of the bill was advanced from February, 2018 to April 1, after users complained that the site crashed within an hour after clients started to fill in details.

In Maharashtra, the check on e-way bill implementation started only in April-end, wherein the trucks were checked at 18 active border check posts of the state by tax officials. According to the GST department, five cases were registered against consignors who had failed to produce the e-way bills and penalty had been levied on them. “The penalty depends upon the value of the consignment which varies from case to case. Till now the penalty has varied between the range of Rs 50,000- Rs 1.3 lakh. We have not taken legal action against anyone as this is still at the preliminary stage,” a senior GST officer said.

Transporters have highlighted their issues in an official meeting with the state GST commissioner earlier this month. “Many times, truck brokers tend to load more material from different consignors in a bigger vehicle to increase their revenues. In such cases, if the broker has not informed us (transporter) about the material being clubbed in one truck, our vehicle get intercepted. All of this gets wrongly interpreted as tax evasion on the part of consignors or transporter, which in fact, is a genuine error,” the transporter added.

While the transporter is required to update details in the e-way bill each time they change the vehicle from any part of the country, the process takes several days, they complain. “We are bearing the brunt of even the smallest ‘clerical errors’. A truck driver does not essentially have the knowledge of updating the bill. As multiple trucks leave in the night time, it is difficult to expect someone to be available on the computer so that they can update the vehicle number. While the government has assured to be working on these errors, we are facing trouble each passing day,” Malkit Singh, chairman core committee, of All India Motor Transport Congress.

Transporters said that they are trying to meet manufacturers and traders to understand their issues as well with the system.”Our members do not undertake transportation without invoice or e-way bill. However, the process involves investment of a lot of time on updating the paper work which is very difficult in transport business. We equally face the brunt from customers who deduct our freight cost for any lapse en route,” a senior transporter added.

Rajiv Jalota, state GST commissioner said, “Maharashtra has reported a few cases where the consignors were found to be without e-way bills. The problems in the implementation of e-way bill is getting resolved almost on a fortnightly basis where necessary corrections are being made in the software, changes in the rules are brought out. It will take some time for these errors to smoothen out.”