The Chief Commissioner of State Tax, Commercial Taxes Department, Babu. A has stated that the Andhra Pradesh Commercial Taxes Department, in collaboration with the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), will launch a new Biometric Face Authentication feature through a mobile application, effective from January 1, 2025.
In a release on Tuesday, he said that the Biometric Face Authentication was aimed at streamlining the verification process while preventing bogus taxpayers from entering the GST ecosystem at the registration stage, thus protecting the system from the misuse of fake Input Tax Credit (ITC). Additionally, it offered enhanced security against the misuse of Aadhaar details and the creation of fake identity cards, safeguarding innocent individuals whose Aadhaar information might have been misused, and ensuring that only legitimate taxpayers were enrolled in the system.
Currently, there were 12 GST Seva Kendras (GSKs) in Andhra Pradesh where biometric verification was done using fingerprint or iris scanners. To enhance convenience and accessibility, GSTN had developed a mobile application compatible with Android devices (phones or tablets). This new app would enable Biometric Authentication Officers (BAOs) at GSKs to carry out the verification process without the need for any hardware devices. It would allows BAOs to log in, enter the Aadhaar details, and capture the applicant’s photo for face authentication and verification in a single step, he said.
The Commissioner said that by using the new functionality, biometric verification would now be completed in two steps instead of the previous three steps.
In the first step, photo capture and face authentication: the applicant’s biometric details are verified through facial recognition. In the second step, document verification: verification of the applicant’s documents is carried out.
