Over 200 officers of the Central Excise, Customs and Service Tax Department posted in the districts of Sundargarh, Jharsuguda, Sambalpur, Bargarh, Balangir and Deogarh under the Rourkela Commissionerate protested recently wearing black badges at their respective headquarters.
At the Commissionerate headquarters here, similar protests were held by the officers. They said that decisions taken by the GST council would result into substantive reduction in assessee base of Centre which would further result into substantive reduction of manpower affecting adversely the career prospects of officers at all levels.
Currently, the officers are forced to retire with single promotion in the career of 35-40 years as against five to six promotions being enjoyed by their counterparts despite of collecting revenue regularly above the set targets, the officers alleged.
The protest call was given by steering committee of all associations of Central Board of Excise and Customs comprising officers and staff of Group A,B,C and D. Commissioner of Rourkela Commissionerate, Satyendra Kumar Singh representing the Group A officers, Koraprasad Tripathy and Gobind Chandra Nath representing the Grade B associations said that GST decisions have been taken without any lawful basis.
The decision to transfer 90 per cent of the service tax assessees to States is not supported by any lawful and logical base and therefore, the decisions taken by GST Council should be withdrawn immediately, Tripathy demanded.
There is no logic to transfer 90 percent of GST assessees to the States for the purpose of audit and assessment. Moreover, the service tax assessees falling within the annual turnover limit of Rs 10 lakh to Rs 1.5 crore are at present being assessed by the Centre. By such transfer of assessees, the Central
officers would become workless, Nath said.