Union finance minister Arun Jaitley has said that the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) will be auditing the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), which is the nationwide electronic backbone of the new tax regime. In a refusal of party colleague Subramanian Swamy, he defended the equity structure of GSTN and said that he did not find anything wrong in government holding 49 percent stake in the company. BJP member Subramanian Swamy has repeatedly questioned the shareholding pattern in the GSTN, terming it a shady organisation that was a grave security issue.
The minister has stated that the present structure of GST Network was decided by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) when P Chidambaram was the finance minister. He said “I have personally reviewed the entire structure and I saw no reason to disagree with him.” He pointed out that GSTN is going to match hundreds of crores of vouchers every month and therefore there has to be an extremely efficient IT network.
Jaitley further said that the structure which was conceived was that the central and the state governments will together own 49 percent of the equity. He also said that the other 51 percent will belong to some very responsible bodies like LIC Housing, National Stock Exchange, HDFC Bank and so on. Therefore, he noted that it technically gave flexibility to the GSTN to hire the best IT experts.