‘Mera Bill, Mera Adhikar’ scheme launched in six states, consumers to be rewarded
To encourage the culture of consumers seeking bills for services and commodities that they purchase and avail of, the central government’s invoice promotion scheme, ‘Mera Bill, Mera Adhikar’, was launched on Friday in Gurugram by Haryana deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala along with union revenue secretary Sanjay Malhotra.
The duo said this scheme will encourage the culture of generating GST bills and will benefit all stakeholders in the ecosystem. Apart from Haryana, the scheme was also be launched in Assam and Gujarat and the three Union Territories of Puducherry, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu as a pilot project, which will be expanded gradually across the country, they said.
Sharing details of the scheme, Chautala said, “A corpus of ₹30 crore has been made available towards the fund under this initiative on an annual basis. Every quarter, there will be two awards for consumers, worth ₹1 crore each, and that translates to eight such awards of ₹1 crore a year, and these will be given to the winners through a draw of lots. Every month, there will be 10 awards of ₹1 lakh each, and 80 awards of ₹10,000 each.”
Chautala said the purpose of this scheme was to boost GST awareness among consumers, who shall be motivated to seek bills and ensure that these transactions are part of the GST system. “The GST taxation system was launched in 2016 and the results have been impressive. The tax collection has increased while the tax regime has also been simplified. The average rate of taxation has come to around 12% and it is likely to reduce further,” he said.
Chautala said while the average monthly GST collection was ₹1 lakh crore in 2017, it has increased to ₹1.60 lakh crore at present.
Union revenue secretary Sanjay Malhotra, who jointly launched the scheme with Chautala, said the objective of this programme is to promote the practise of asking customers for invoice/bill for all their purchases.
The objective of this scheme is to bring a radical change in the behaviour of the general public, so that they start considering it their right and entitlement to ”demand bills” from all the vendors, he said.
“We started this scheme on a pilot basis in three states and three Union Territories and going forward, we will implement this scheme across India on the basis of the outcomes and learnings from this pilot scheme,” Malhotra said.
Under this programme, all bills issued to the consumers in the respective states and Union Territories will be eligible to participate in this scheme.
The minimum value of an invoice to be considered for the lucky draw has been kept at ₹200. Invoices can be uploaded through mobile application ‘Mera Bill Mera Adhikar’ available on iOS and Android as well as web portal “web.merabill.gst.gov.in”.
Sanjay Aggarwal, chairman, Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBIC), and Shashank Priya, member, CBIC, also made purchases in the marketplace in Sector 15 Part 2 and received their GST bills to participate in the ‘Mera Bill, Mera Adhikaar’ scheme on Friday.
