The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) on Tuesday asked all Indian airlines to mandatorily share with them the PNR details of international passengers with customs authorities 24 hours prior to departure of their flights to help authorities maintain “risk analysis” of passengers and prevent law offenders from fleeing the country.
The information airlines have to share includes the passenger’s name, contact details, date of issue of ticket, intended travel, and payment details. It will be used by the customs department for improved surveillance and risk assessment of passengers entering or leaving the country, read a notification issued by the Union finance ministry. The CBIC set up ‘National Customs Targeting Centre-Passenger’ for the same purpose.
The team will process information for the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of offences under the Customs Act and also for the law enforcement agencies or government departments or any other country, it said.
The ministry on August 8 notified the ‘Passenger Name Record Information Regulations, 2022’ to prevent economic and other offenders from fleeing the country, as well as check any illicit trade such as smuggling. With this, India adds to the list of 60 other countries that collect PNR details of international passengers.
“Every aircraft operator shall transfer the passenger name record information… of passengers they have already collected such information in the normal course of business operations, to the designated customs systems,” the regulations said, adding every aircraft operator will have to seek registration with customs for its implementation.
At present, airlines are only required to share the name, nationality and passport details of the passenger in advance with the immigration authorities.
The government had first proposed the requirement in the Union Budget for 2017 but it was not formalised.
The finance ministry in Parliament said that a total of 38 economic offenders, including Nirav Modi, Vijay Mallya and Mehul Choksi, fled the country in the last five years. Mehul Choksi, one of the prime accused in the alleged over ₹13,000-crore PNB loan fraud case, fled to Antigua and Barbuda just as ED and CBI zeroed in on him.
It further said that for each act of non-compliance to these regulations, the aircraft operators would have to pay a penalty of a minimum of ₹25,000 and a maximum of ₹50,000.
The regulation also said that the team may share the relevant information on a “case-to-case basis” with other law enforcement agencies or government departments of India or any other country.
KPMG in India, Partner, Indirect Tax, Abhishek Jain said the objective of said regulations is to obtain relevant passenger data for risk analysis to proactively prevent, detect, investigate or prosecute offences under the domestic or international law.
“The onus of timely collecting and sharing such information has been put on the airline operators. Further, while strict privacy guidelines have been stipulated under the said regulations, the government should ensure that the same are duly enforced to prevent unauthorised usage,” Jain said.
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