NEW DELHI/JAMMU/PUNE: An ongoing investigation by the GST authorities in India has spelt trouble for the businesswoman Namita Thapar and her pharma company Emcure for wrongly seeking credit of the tax deposit over the invoices raised in 2017.
Emcure Pharma, with a revenue of Rs 7,000-odd crore, is a company that was started by Thapar’s father Satish Mehta, who at present serves as its chairman. The company had got listed only last year.
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In one order as recent as 2024, the appellant authority of central tax in Pune has slapped a recovery of Rs 1.05 crore on Emcure, while determining that it is a civil obligation to pay this fine after finding that the CENVAT (Central Vat ) deposit by Emcure and claimed as GST is not admissible.
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“As regards penalty imposed under Section 122(2)(a) of the Act, the appellant (Emcure) has availed inadmissible Input Tax Credit of CGST of Rs 95,57,439/- in contravention of the provisions of Section 140(5) of the Act and rendered themselves liable for 10% penalty of Rs.9,55,744/- under Section 122(2)(a) of the Act,” the order has said.
Namita who has appeared on a TV show Shark Tank, did not reply to the queries by The New Indian over text messages sent to her personal secretary Tanya Raheja
In another case, GST authorities are trying to ascertain if Emcure rightly claimed Rs 5.22 crore as credit for more than 746 invoices on procurement of goods in Jammu and Kashmir for the period between July 2017 to December 2017.
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Emcure, in its response before GST, is relying on a 2003 Central Excise order, saying that the units located in other parts of the country are allowed to take full credit of duty paid on the goods procured from J&K, North East, Sikkim and Kutch).
GST sources, however, said they may do a re-audit of Emcure’s J&K facilities.
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“Emcure has so far maintained that they used to procure pharmaceutical goods from various places of India including the units located in Jammu and Kashmir and stored goods in a central warehouse. There are 539 invoices that were issued by units located in Jammu and Kashmir and 207 invoices issued by units in rest of India. It is also true that goods held in stock, from J&K are exempted. But we are doing full investigations,” said a GST official.
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Earlier, Emcure’s associate director Narendra Adawadkar and one assistant manager Krishna Kadam, have appeared for GST as authorised representatives to give replies to queries raised by GST authorities.
Emcure claims it is the 12th largest company in India, with the presence of its formulations spread across 70 countries. It’s key manufactutring and API locations are located in Hinjawadi in Pune.
In 2023, Namita had courted a mega controversy after she shared a tweet in which she accused her “educated house help” of stealing her phone and putting a hateful post on her social media account. A photo on her account was earlier captioned was claimed to have been written by one of her two sons Jai and Veeru that asked her followers to unfollow her.
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Namita, though has enjoyed an image of a shark investor, having pumped in money in some 100-odd companies. It’s not clear, however, if those companies made any profit yet.