NEW DELHI: In a stern message to GST officers, Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs chief Sanjay Agarwal on Tuesday urged them to focus on "real evasion", instead of "interpretative issues and general industry practice".

The statement comes days after Directorate General of GST Investigation issued a pre-show cause notice to IT major Infosys pointing to possible evasion of over Rs 32,000 crore, prompting intervention by the finance ministry.

Besides, there have been several other complaints against the probe wing for "interpreting rules" to raise aggressive tax demands. In fact, in some of the cases, such as reinsurance and coinsurance as well as shipping companies, the GST Council has had to step in to issue a clarification. Internal checks have also been put in place by the CBIC to prevent demands such as those made against Infosys.

At a meeting of enforcement chiefs of the state and central GST formations, revenue secretary Sanjay Malhotra too stressed on the need to maintain "a fine balance between enforcement actions and ease of doing business," indicating that unnecessary actions should be avoided.

He asked officers to focus on fake registrations during the two-month special drive and pushed them to track the masterminds and beneficiaries of fake ITC so that action can be taken against them, an official statement said. 

The focus of the drive will be on non-intrusive actions with GST Network, which provides the technology backbone, highlighting tech initiatives to tackle issue of evasion while ensuring business facilitation isn't hampered.

Based on certain identified risk parameters, a total of 59,000 potential fake firms have been identified for verification and further enquiry.

Since 2020, when the drive was first launched, DGGI has detected fake ITC cases of Rs 1.2 crore which has led to 170 "masterminds" being apprehended, the statement said.