Bengaluru: Union Revenue Secretary Tarun Bajan on Monday urged the Customs department to be cautious following an increase in drug hauls effected in ports and airports across the country.
Noting that the Customs has also been working relentlessly on intelligence, Bajaj said things like gold, drugs, red-sanders and wildlife have been coming to the borders as reflected in the large number of seizures in the past one year.
"Suddenly all of us are now noticing that drugs, especially heroin, have started coming in a big way and a lot of seizures have been made...," Bajaj said during the investiture ceremony by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs.
Asking officials to be cautious, he said, "The change in the geopolitical situation may actually see that we are getting more quantity than what we were getting earlier. So we have to ensure that we pull up our socks and try and stop this menace from happening." Bajaj's warning comes in the wake of authorities seizing 3,000 kg of drugs worth Rs 21,000 crore, believed to be from Afghanistan, at the Mundra port in Gujarat's Kutch district on September 21, 2021.
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Further, on December 20, authorities impounded a Pakistani fishing boat with six crew members carrying 77 kg of heroin worth Rs 400 crore off the Gujarat coast.
In Bengaluru, some celebrities were arrested last year for allegedly possessing and doing drugs. They were caught along with some Nigerian nationals and people from neighbouring Kerala.
As many as 53 officers were presented the President's Award for their exemplary services, some of whom had even risked their lives to nab the accused, in the presence of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
On the Goods and Services Tax, the Revenue Secretary said things have stabilised to quite an extent.
According to him, the revenue, which had dropped below Rs one lakh crore during the COVID period, has now crossed the Rs one lakh crore mark.
"We have come a long way. A lot of efforts that have taken place on that front. We have been able to show that without much changes, through increased compliances and increased intelligence, we are now able to get on a routine basis Rs 1.30 lakh crore to Rs 1.40 lakh crore," Bajaj told the gathering.
Bajaj, a senior IAS officer, also said the central government has been using a lot of technology and artificial intelligence for GST collection and check fraud, which led to huge number of arrests including that of professionals.
"In the past 15 months we have arrested more than 630 people. We have picked up 20,000 fake GSTINs and taken action against them. And out of this over 600 people that we have arrested 18 are professionals like chartered accountants, lawyers and company secretaries," the officer explained.
Addressing the general grievance that the GST regime has been a harassment, Bajaj said artificial intelligence and data analytics that happened in the GST collection helped in detecting 'needle in the haystack'.
"I don't go and try to locate that needle in the haystack. AI and data analytics has actually helped the revenues go up to an extent, though the economy is also bouncing back and that has also contributed," the officer pointed out.
Bajaj said the next level efforts on GST will ensure the fake billing issue is reduced to the minimum.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) initiated a money-laundering probe into the haul, among the biggest across the globe, while the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), which seized the 2,988.21 kg heroin and arrested a couple that runs an import firm from Chennai, officials said.
