4 states, Puducherry to roll out intra-state e-way bill from April 25

New Delhi: Four more states, including Madhya Pradesh, and Union Territory of Puducherry will roll out the e-way bill for intra-state movement of goods from April 25.

From April 1, the government had launched the electronic way or e-way bill system for moving goods worth over Rs 50,000 from one state to another.

The same for intra or within the state movement has been rolled out from April 15. So far 12 states have made e-way bill mandatory for intra-state movement of goods.

"Four more states -- Madhya Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Meghalaya -- and union territory of Puducherry will roll out intra-state eway bill from April 25," GSTN CEO Prakash Kumar told PTI in an interview.

The electronic way or e-way bill for inter-state movement of goods valued over Rs 50,000 was rolled out on April 1. Karnataka was the sole state to start intra-state e-way bill on the same day.

The GST council had decided on a staggered rollout of intra-state e-way bill starting from April 15 with 5 states -- Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala.

Thereafter 6 more states -- Bihar, Jharkhand, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Tripura -- joined in from April 20.

Since the roll out of e-way bill for inter-state movement of goods from April 1 and intra-state from April 15, more than 1.84 crore such bills have been generated till yesterday.

Kumar said the maximum number of e-way bills are generated on the portal in the second half of the day, particularly between 1600-1900 hours -- accounting for one-third of the total generation of such bills during the day.

The maximum number of e-way bills (both inter and intra state) generated has touched 12 lakh on April 21.

"So far the e-way bill portal is going on smoothly. The system has been designed to take load of generation of 75 lakh e-way bills during a day. The system has lot more capacity to take load that what is being generated as of date," Kumar said.

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.