Rajasthan: Officers of commercial tax dept go on strike, took 5-day leave

Jaipur: Rajasthan commercial tax department officials have gone on a five-day leave from Wednesday demanding re-designation of assistant commercial tax officers as assistant commissioners with PB-3 grade pay of Rs 5,400 in the new GST regime.

They launched a protest in the head office, Rajasthan Commercial Taxes Service Association (RCTSA) also demanded that all positions from assistant commercial taxes officers (ACTO) to additional commissioners in the VAT regime should be designated as assistant commissioner to special commissioners in the GST regime in accordance with the section-III of the Rajasthan GST Act-2017, reported TOI.

Additionally, they demanded that all posts from the assistant commissioner to special commissioner should be given to commercial taxes department (CTD) officers. RCTSA said in a circular that CTD has five-tier hierarchy structure which matches exactly with that of the structure proposed in the GST.

“This would also help in creating a similar hierarchy structure throughout the country which is the sole aim of the ‘one nation, one tax, one market’ philosophy of GST,” said Rajnikant Sharma, president of the association.

“The department has able, trained and technically-equipped officers who have impacted training to the Central government officers at various levels. Therefore, RCTSA strongly opposes deputation of any officer from any other department,” he stated.

Eighty percent of the VAT payers in Rajasthan have already done primary registration, but The strike to hinder migration of many dealers to the GST Network which reopened on June 25.