In re Hisham Transport (GST AAR Kerala)
In the matter of In re Hisham Transport, the Kerala Authority for Advance Ruling (AAR) examined whether the supply of drinking water by the applicant through tanker lorries is exempt under GST. Hisham Transport, a registered partnership firm in Ernakulam, supplies potable drinking water to both government institutions and private customers. The water is collected from various sources like dug wells, bore wells, and occasionally from the Kerala Water Authority. After collection, the water undergoes basic purification through filtration and chlorination before being delivered in bulk via tanker lorries to customers who store it in their own tanks or containers. The applicant contended that this drinking water is exempt from GST under Serial No. 99 of Notification No. 02/2017-Central Tax (Rate), dated 28.06.2017, which excludes only specific types of water such as mineral, aerated, distilled, demineralized, and water sold in sealed containers.
The AAR carefully reviewed the purification process used by the applicant, which involves standard public-health measures and does not fall under the categories of water excluded from the GST exemption. Importantly, the water is not packaged in sealed containers but is supplied in large volumes (2,000 to 30,000 kilolitres) through tanker lorries. As such, the supply qualifies as “water other than aerated, mineral, distilled, medicinal, ionic, battery, demineralized, and water sold in sealed containers” under the said notification. The ruling emphasized that basic filtration and chlorination do not equate to industrial or therapeutic processing and are common methods used to make water potable.
