NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has directed authorities across the country to ensure that no GST registration is allowed without biometric-based Aadhaar authentication, amid concerns over the continued misuse of stolen or frozen PAN and Aadhaar details to obtain fraudulent GST registrations.
The interim direction was issued after the court noted that the Revenue had failed to draw its attention to any difficulty in making biometric-based Aadhaar authentication mandatory for all GST registrations.
The court, however, granted liberty to the authorities to place on record any objections or practical difficulties in implementing the direction.
Taking note of written submissions filed by the Commissioner, Department of Trade and Taxes, and a status report submitted by the Delhi Police, the court observed that biometric-based Aadhaar authentication is currently carried out only when the GST system identifies an application as “risky” based on various parameters and data analytics.
The court said this appeared contrary to a statement made by the Minister of State for Finance in the Rajya Sabha that biometric Aadhaar-based authentication had been made mandatory for GST registration.
According to the minister's statement, 2,800 fraudulent registrations were detected in 2023-24 and another 1,654 in 2024-25, involving cumulative tax evasion of Rs 28,194 crore.
The High Court noted that more than a year had passed since the minister's statement, but the measure had still not been fully implemented. It observed that fraudulent GST registrations continued to be obtained using stolen or frozen PAN and Aadhaar details.
The court said it was therefore “compelled to request the competent authorities to rise to the situation” and stressed that “the authorities are expected to take up the matter with all seriousness”.
The directions were issued in a matter concerning fraudulent GST registrations. The court had earlier recorded 10 suggestions made by senior advocate Tarun Gulati to tackle the problem and has now directed the authorities to examine those suggestions as well.
The matter has been listed for further consideration on September 22, 2026.