The drive unearthed 29,273 bogus firms involved in the suspected tax credit evasion leading to arrest of 121 persons, the ministry said in a statement.

To curb GST frauds and to increase compliance, central and state tax authorities are carrying out a focused drive against bogus GST registrations and issuance of fake invoices without any underlying supply of goods and services.

This effort has saved ₹4,646 crore of which ₹3,802 crore is by blocking of input tax credit and ₹844 crore by way of recovery, the ministry said.

In the quarter ending December, 2023, 4,153 bogus firms involved in suspected input tax credit evasion of around Rs. 12,036 crore were detected.

More than half of these firms were detected by the Central GST authorities.

This has protected revenue of Rs. 1,317 crore including tax realised and tax credits blocked. In these cases, 41 persons were arrested, mostly by Central GST Authorities.

The ministry said that government has taken several measures to strengthen GST registration. Pilot projects of biometric based Aadhar authentication at the time of registration have been launched in Gujarat, Puducherry and Andhra Pradesh.

Besides, the Government has tried to curtail evasion of tax through measures such as sequential filing of GST returns and system generated intimation for reconciliation of the gap in tax liability reflected in different GST return forms, the statement said. Data analytics is also being used to detect tax evasion.

Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh are among the states where the highest number of fake firms were detected in the December quarter, data released by the ministry showed.