Huge disruption of goods transport likely on Feb 26

Transportation of goods and services is set to come to a grinding halt on February 26 across the country as several transporters’ associations and Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) have called for a Bharat Bandh demanding a review of the provisions of the GST regime.

As many as 6 million trucks including 1.2 million national permit holders (about 75,000 inbound and outbound trucks are in Bengaluru) will go off the roads. The All-India Transporters Welfare Association (AITWA), Karnataka Goods Transporters’ Association and South India Motor Transporters Association besides many state-level bodies are protesting against the changes in the E-way bill and also continuous rise in diesel prices.

Transporters across the country have been using latest amendment in the GST laws, which has halved the validity of the E-way bill, a permit associated with the inter-state and intra-state movement of goods, from 100 km per day, to 200 km per day. Penalties for a truck carrying a consignment with an expired E-way bill, or with an erroneous E-way bill amount to 200% of the tax value, or 100% of the invoice value under Section 129 of CGST Act, 2017, transporters said.

“For small and medium transporters, especially those involved in part-load movement of goods or retail transportation, complying with the new rule has meant a higher and costly compliance burden, with penalties running into lakhs of rupees, for circumstantial delays. This may lead to completely shutting their shop,” Mahendra Arya, National President, AITWA told DH.

The government may have taken this step to curb corruption, but it may be checked that majority of the evasion cases are discovered by intelligence and not by interception of trucks, he said.

“Many practical aspects such as weekly offs, bank holidays, weather conditions, etc are not considered and thus short route trips are also affected. Apart from this, less than truck load consolidators or part load transporters are greatly affected as they need 3-4 days to collect cargo for a truck from multiple suppliers,” Arya said.

In Bengaluru, around 75,000 trucks – both inward and outward -- will be off the roads. “We are not disturbing common man’s daily essential commodities like milk, medicine and fruits & vegetables will not be impacted,” Prakash Pandey, President, Karnataka Goods Transporters Association said.