In re Chhanda Bhattacharya (GST AAR West Bengal)
The West Bengal Authority for Advance Ruling (AAR) considered an application from a registered entity seeking clarification on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) treatment of services involving collection of household data for Functional Household Tap Connections (FHTC) through mobile applications for the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED), Government of West Bengal. The applicant intended to provide these services across various divisions of West Bengal in connection with water distribution networks. The questions posed for advance ruling were whether these services could be classified under Entry 3 of Notification No. 12/2017-Central Tax (Rate) dated 28.06.2017 (as amended), which provides exemption from GST for certain pure services provided to government authorities, and if not, what the applicable classification and tax rate would be.
The applicant submitted that the PHED oversees a comprehensive network of 6,851 piped water supply schemes (PWSS) across West Bengal, delivering safe drinking water to rural households under the national Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), which aims to provide Functional Household Tap Connections (FHTCs) to every rural household. PHED’s responsibilities include rural and limited urban water supply, mitigation of water quality issues, creation of sustainability structures such as aquifer recharge, and disaster management. The department also manages 219 water testing laboratories, analyzing over 700,000 samples annually for chemical, bacteriological, and physical parameters. To effectively monitor its extensive infrastructure, PHED has integrated technology including digital asset management systems, mobile and web applications, GIS mapping, and sensors at critical points in the network, all feeding data into a centralized Management Information System (MIS) and a Command and Control Centre.
