GRAS portal to enable people to pay govt receipts from anywhere: Financial Commissioner Finance, Dr. Arun Kumar Mehta
Jammu: Financial Commissioner Finance, Dr. Arun Kumar Mehta today launched an online platform – Government Receipt Accounting System (GRAS) portal for easy payment of government receipts from anywhere without visits to treasuries or banks.
On the occasion Director General Accounts & Treasuries (DG A&T), Mahesh Dass; Excise Commissioner, Rahul Sharma; Deputy Excise Commissioner, Jammu, Amarjeet Singh; Director A&T, Jammu, Neeraj Gupta Bakshi, Joint Director (Resources), Shoukat Hussain; Vice President, JK Bank, Sunit Kumar, Scientists from NIC, representatives of RBI besides other officers of the Finance department were present.
Dr Mehta enquired about the different features of this portal. He asked the developers to inculcate the feature of SMS alert to facilitate the customers. He directed them to take on board all the departments taking any kind of fee (tax/non-tax) from the citizens, business establishments, institutions.
The FC also urged them to look into what other features could be added to the platform so that the process becomes more simple and user-friendly. He asked the scientists to use all the protection techniques as per the guidelines of GoI, IT Ministry. He directed for making the portal a one stop solution for all kinds of activities where the people have to visit treasuries and banks for depositing tax or any other kind of fee to avail government services.
The meeting was informed that the GRAS portal will serve as common collection portal and will provide facility to the citizens, business communities to deposit/ remit tax/ non tax to the government electronically through GRAS Portal thereby bringing in greater transparency in government business of receipt collection.
The GRAS portal is accessible by logging on to www.jkgrasjktreasury.gov.in. A user can generate e-Challan through this portal for remittances either through internet banking service available 24 X 7 or over the counter. The Portal also provides the facility for frequent visitors to register as a user in order to avoid entering personal data repeatedly.
The various stakeholders of the application are tax payers like citizens/ firms, Virtual Treasury/ Cyber Treasury, tax assessing departments, Drawing and Disbursing Officers (DDOs)/ tax collecting officers, Agency, Banks like J&K Bank and RBI and Accountant General for preparation of final accounts.
GRAS application will help the department in receipt monitoring, accurate and factual government receipt position which in turn will provide real time government revenue receipt position and generate necessary MIS reports. Initially, GRAS is being implemented on pilot basis in Excise and Taxation department and will later cover other departments for which all government departments shall furnish their receipt head details viz-a-viz services to be linked with receipts head details.
The portal will give correct and factual insight to the registered users about their accounts as it would upgrade to full automation of the same. They could deposit to government receipts on real time basis, making settlements easy besides receive acknowledgements online. It would save their time and reduce gap between the payer and payee, the meeting was informed.
Pertinent to mention here that for smooth implementation of GRAS and for collection and consolidation of data related to government receipts and other receipts including GST on daily basis, Cyber Treasury has already been created alongside Civil Secretariat Treasury vide Govt. Order No. 262-F of 2020 dated 25.09.2020. It was further given that Treasury Officer, Civil Secretariat Treasury is nominated as Treasury Officer for Cyber Treasury as well.