Civil supplies to carry out GST drive

Civil supplies department will take up special drive from Thursday across the state to check shops and commercial establishments collecting higher GST and higher price than MRP. Special teams comprising of officials and staff from legal metrology department have been formed for the purpose.

It will book cases and impose penalty of Rs 2,000 to Rs 25,000 on shops found to be violating the norms during the raids.

The department received large scale complaints on shops fleecing consumers in the name of GST and collecting GST for items which are listed in zero tax slab in GST regime.

Civil supplies commissioner C.V. Anand on Wednesday held a meeting with legal metrology officials to finalise special drive against shops and commercial establishments violating GST and MRP norms.

Mr Anand directed officials to initiate stringent action against the violators.He said the department has been recieving lot of complaints on MRP violations from consumers and asked officials to act fast on such complaints.

Mr Anand asked consumers to lodge GST, MRP related complaints on 73307744444 (WhatsApp number  of civil supplies department), 

Whatsapp helpline 7330774444 launched to handle the grievances of the public and other stakeholders

The Telangana Civil Supplies department has established a ‘WhatsApp Centre’ at its headquarters here, to handle the grievances of the public and other stakeholders such as farmers, millers, warehouse owners, transporters and fair price shop dealers.

Those intending to lodge a complaint may send it through the ‘WhatsApp’ application to the number ‘7330774444’, along with images, audio or video clippings. Complaints may be about corrupt practices of officials, FP shops closed during regular hours, shortage of ration, diversion of commodities, injustice to farmers or regarding e-PoS machines at the FP shops.

The complaint will be received by the control room at the headquarters, and forwarded to the official concerned. Response about the action taken will be immediately and then forwarded to the complainant through ‘WhatsApp’.

The ‘WhatsApp Control Room’ was launched by the Secretary, Information Technology here on Friday, along with the project of installation of CCTV cameras in 171 Mandal Level Stockist Points (MLSPs).

The control room will be monitored by three members 24X7.

A total of 1715 high definition cameras will be fixed at the MLSPs, after the successful results of installing them in nine warehouses in Greater Hyderabad.

The video wall facility where the movement of trucks can be observed live, will be extended to the Joint Collectors’ offices in the State soon, Civil Supplies Commissioner C.V. Anand said.

The department had launched the command control centre in order to prevent diversion of PDS rice in two stages, between the buffer godowns and MLSPs and from MLSPs to the fair price shops, respectively.

Whenever the vehicles go off from the authorised route, online alerts would be generated and the erring persons could be brought to book.