Vidarbha Industries Association delegation met Hon’ble Union Finance Minister, Smt. Nirmala Sitaraman regarding the difficulties being faced by the merchant exporters in getting ITC refund and by the directors of the strike off companies. Hon’ble Union Agriculture & Rural Development Minister, Narendra Singh Tomar was also present in the meeting.
The first issue was related to Merchant Exporters, who were unable to get their refund of GST paid on goods purchased in the last month of the finance year i.e March if such goods were Exported in the next financial year.  This is due to Financial Year closer.
VIA has submitted that when a merchant exporter purchases goods to be exported, in a month say in the month of March 2019 (last month of the Financial Year) is not able to export the goods in the month of March 2019 but export these goods in the month of April 2019 which falls in the next financial year.
As the financial year in which the goods are purchased is different than the financial year in which the goods are exported the merchant exporter is not able to claim the ITC as a refund in the month of March 2019. They are also forbidden for claiming the refund in the month as there have no Export in that month the application in Form GST RFD-01 to the common portal cannot be filed. Even though this ITC gets to carry forward in the next financial year, the refund cannot be claimed in the next financial year.
Second issue was related to Director’s feeling the heat of DIN blocked in case of Strike of Companies – Pursuant to notice under Section 248(1) (c) of the Companies Act, 2013 in March 2017, the name of many companies have been struck off from the Registrar of Companies, owing to not carrying on any business or operation for a period of two immediately preceding financial years.
As a result, the names of the companies were struck off and directors attracted disqualification status even in companies other than strike off companies. Following disqualification, directors of such companies are unable to comply with the statutory obligations in the companies which have ongoing business operations. They are thus left with no option but to approach the National Company Law Tribunal.
The company is required to file a writ–petition at NCLT which is evidently a repressive & cumbersome procedure and warrants obnoxious expenditure. Moreover, it is quite unreasonable to saddle the overburdened Courts/Tribunals, with such trivial petitions, which are already found grappling with the paucity of time under the huge quantum of cases.
Therefore, request has been made to the Hon’ble Finance Minister to introduce a more cost-effective and expeditious other simplified procedure to enable these strike off companies to apply for removal of their names from the Register of Companies through regular channel u/s 248(2) of the Companies Act, 2013, and to remove disqualification from directorship.
