Govt begins move to increase stake in GST Network

The demand that the state take control of GSTN is a long-pending one, and is also prompted by fears that sensitive GST data should not reside in private hands.

Updated on: Apr 10, 2018, 07:18:09 IST

HIndustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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The process of the government acquiring controlling stake in the Goods and Service Tax Network (GSTN) has been put in motion, government officials familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified.

Official said finance minister Arun Jaitley is of the opinion that the government should be the repository of the data provided by companies so that there is no fear of a data breach. (Reuters File Photo)

According to them, finance minister Arun Jaitley has approved the increase of the stake of the central government and the state governments in GSTN to at least 60% from the current 49%, to address fears that the ownership of a company that handles the IT infrastructure and systems related to the Goods and Services Tax, should reside with the state.

Currently, 51% of the ownership of GSTN is with private financial institutions.

The demand that the state take control of GSTN is a long-pending one, and is also prompted by fears that sensitive GST data should not reside in private hands. Several politicians, cutting across party lines, including some from the Bharatiya Janata Party have questioned the wisdom of the control of a critical cog in India’s tax process being vested with private entities.

Jaitley, who is back home after his medical treatment , could still undergo surgery in a few weeks, but has started reviewing files, the officials said. They added that he is of the opinion that the government should be the repository of the data provided by companies so that there is no fear of a data breach.

The current shareholding pattern of GSTN is: central government (24.5%), states (24.5%), HDFC (10%), HDFC Bank (10%), ICICI Bank (10 %), NSE Strategic Investment Company (10 %) and LIC Housing Finance Limited (11 %). GSTN has been set up primarily to provide IT infrastructure and services to the Central and State Governments, tax payers, and other stakeholders for implementation of the unified Goods and Services Tax. The authorised capital of the company is Rs 10 crore and UIDAI chairman Ajay Bhushan Pandey is its chairman.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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