JAIPUR: Agitating officers of Rajasthan commercial tax department went on a five-day leave from Wednesday demanding re-designation of assistant commercial tax officers as assistant commissioners with PB-3 grade pay of Rs 5,400 in the new GST regime.Launching the protest at their head office, Rajasthan Commercial Taxes Service Association (RCTSA) also demanded that all positions from assistant commercial taxes officers (ACTO) to additional commissioners in the VAT regime be designated as assistant commissioner to special commissioners in the GST regime in accordance with the section-III of the Rajasthan GST Act-2017.The other set of demands included that all posts from assistant commissioner to special commissioner should be given to commercial taxes department (CTD) officers. CTD has five-tier hierarchy structure which matches exactly with that of the structure proposed in the GST, RCTSA said in a release. "This would also help in creating a similar hierarchy structure throughout the country which is the sole aim of the `one nation, one tax, one market' philosophy of GST," said Rajnikant Sharma , president of the association.There is a resistance for deputing officers from central excise or customs department to commercial tax.Sharma said, "The department has able, trained and technically-equipped officers who have impacted training to the Central government officers at various levels. Therefo re, RCTSA strongly opposes deputation of any officer from any other department."The mass leave was also triggered after the officers of RCTSA were threatened of transfers and suspensions by the top officials of finance and revenue department, said another office bearer of the association. The strike will hamper migration of dealers to the GST Network which reopened on June 25th. However, almost 80% of the VAT payers in Rajasthan have already done primary registration.

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