Under the GST, e-way bills will be implemented across the country for all inter-state movement of goods from 1 February and for all intra-state movement from 1 June

Six Indian states started trial runs for e-way bills on Tuesday under the goods and services tax (GST), taking the number of states who have rolled out the e-way bill system to 10.

While Karnataka, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Kerala had already started using e-way bills, Haryana, Bihar, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Sikkim and Jharkhand started the trial runs on Tuesday, the GST Network (GSTN) said in a press statement.

E-way bills will be implemented across the country for all inter-state movement of goods from 1 February and for all intra state movement from 1 June.

“Transporters and other taxpayers will not be required to visit any tax office or check post under this system and the E-way Bill can be generated electronically,” said Prakash Kumar, chief executive officer of GSTN.

Under the new system, an e-way bill will have to be generated containing details of the consignment for every inter-state movement of goods over more than 10 km having a value of more than Rs50,000.

Industry, however, is worried that this could lead to harassment by tax authorities. It is also worried that technological glitches may lead to consignments being stopped for a long period of time.

Suresh Nandlal Rohira, partner, Grant Thornton India LLP, said the government may require to relook the timeframe of the validity of the e-way bill for certain sectors.

“Hopefully, the industry would not experience this as a deterring process in their supply chain and would observe more of transaction tracking mechanism to reconcile revenues,” he said in a note.