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 Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Friday that the Goods and Services Tax (GST) registration process may be further strengthened by using technology to curb the entry of fake entities into the GST ecosystem.

The minister also called for a nation-wide campaign to explain the objectives of the special drive to weed out the fake entities.

Sitharaman was chairing a review meeting of the ongoing drive against fake billing for GST evasion. The minister was informed that 11,140 fake registrations have already been detected and action has been initiated against them.

Sitharaman was also apprised of the methods being adopted such as identity theft of people, along with the actions being taken against fake registrations.

She also took note of the existing measures being undertaken by the Finance Ministry such as OTP-based verification of Aadhaar and pilot of biometric-based Aadhaar authentication at the time of registration in high-risk cases.

Revenue Secretary Sanjay Malhotra and CBIC Chairman Vivek Johri apprised Sitharaman that Artificial Intelligence tools are being extensively used to identify the possible fake networks.