GST: 22 states remove border check posts, 8 are dismantling

New Delhi, July 3 (IANS) By the third day of the GST roll-out, 22 states had already abolished their border tax check posts, while eight others are in the process of doing so, the central government said on Monday.

"With the roll-out of the GST, 22 states in India have abolished their check posts," a Finance Ministry release here said. Among these are Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal.

States where border check posts are in the process of being dismantled are Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram, Tripura and Punjab, the statement added.

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) that came into effect pan-India, except Jammu and Kashmir, from July 1, replaced the earlier myriad central and state taxes with a single national tax making the movement of goods much simpler across the country.

At the state level, the taxes that GST subsumes include state cesses and surcharges, luxury tax, state VAT, purchase tax, central sales tax, taxes on advertisements, entertainment tax, all forms of entry tax, and taxes on lotteries and betting.

Central taxes replaced by the GST are service tax, special additional customs duties (SAD), additional Excise duties on goods of special importance, central excise, additional customs duties, excise on medicinal and toilet preparations), additional excise duties on textiles and textile products, and cesses and surcharges.

Thus unifying the Indian market, the GST is the realisation of the vision that guided the nationalist bourgeoisie in joining the Gandhian struggle to liberate India from the British.