Week in Review: GST Council Cuts Arrest Power, RBI Hikes Repo Rate

The week’s most consequential sentence was about a power the State is giving up. On 8 October the 57th GST Council, chaired by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, recommended omitting section 69 of the Central GST Act, the power of arrest, raising the prosecution threshold five-fold to ₹5 crore of tax, and sanctioning 90% of export and inverted-duty refunds automatically, according to the Ministry of Finance release of that evening. The day before, the Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee had raised the repo rate 25 basis points to 5.50% with a stance of “calibrated tightening”, on the Reserve Bank’s statement of 7 October, and the Bank’s weekly supplement of 9 October then put foreign exchange reserves at $734.6 billion for the week to 2 October, $12.95 billion lower on the week. That recommendation is the Big Read below.

Industry gave the week its numbers. Defence exports reached a record ₹38,424 crore in 2025-26, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh told the Society of Indian Defence Manufacturers on 9 October, which Blitz set against the Ministry’s own April 2025 figure of ₹23,622 crore for a rise of 62.7%. Hindustan Aeronautics’ Koraput division handed over its 2,000th aero-engine on 5 October. The India Mobile Congress ran from 7 to 10 October at Yashobhoomi: the Department of Telecommunications counted 634 use cases and 32 patents from its 100 college 5G labs, the Bharat 6G Alliance signed five agreements, and the Minister of State for Communications set a target of 10% of the world’s 6G patents, all on Ministry of Communications releases of 8 and 9 October. The Ministry of Power recorded installed capacity of 558.8 GW on 30 September, 55% of it non-fossil, on its release of 8 October.

India’s dealings abroad ran through the week. President Guy Parmelin of Switzerland signed five documents in New Delhi on 5 October, with a $100 billion investment commitment over fifteen years under the EFTA agreement in the background, on the PMO’s list of outcomes. India and Japan published the operating manual for carbon-credit trading under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement, on the Environment Ministry’s release of 5 October. Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav put India’s position at the Pre-COP in Fiji on 8 October. Finance Minister Sitharaman flew to Singapore on 9 October to meet the sovereign funds GIC and Temasek, whose country has invested $194.68 billion in India since 2000. The ASEAN trade pact review met in Jakarta from 6 to 9 October and India hosts the next round in January.

And the week had its people. Seventy young Indians came home from the WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai with six silver medals and 20 medallions for excellence and a tenth place, and the Prime Minister received them on 9 October. India’s Asian Games contingent finished fourth in Nagoya with 85 medals, All India Radio reported on 4 October. Tele-MANAS, the free mental-health line on 14416, completed four years on 10 October with 47,75,644 calls answered. The President opened AIIMS Bilaspur’s first convocation on 6 October. The Prime Minister closed the national summit on women and child development on 9 October by asking universities to adopt the Anganwadi centres near them.

Numbers of the Week

Seven figures that held the week, each with its unit and period.

The Sector Diary: eighteen fields, seven days

Eighteen sectors, every week. A sector in which nothing of consequence happened says so.

Big Read: GST gives up power to arrest

The 57th GST Council has recommended taking the power of arrest out of the tax, prosecuting only above ₹5 crore, and paying nine-tenths of an exporter’s refund without an officer’s signature. Blitz reads what changes on a trader’s desk, and what the Council left for the notifications.

Section 69 of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, the one that lets an officer arrest, is to go. That is the first line under “ease of doing business” in the recommendations of the 57th GST Council, chaired by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and released by the Ministry of Finance through the Press Information Bureau at 7:03 PM on 8 October 2026. The release says nothing in it has legal force until the notifications, circulars and amendments follow. It is equally careful to list what those will do.

A five-fold criminal threshold

The threshold for prosecution rises from ₹1 crore of tax to ₹5 crore, five times by Blitz arithmetic, and section 132, which sets out offences and punishments, is to be rewritten alongside. The general penalty under section 125 falls from ₹25,000 to ₹10,000, a 60% cut. Where the tax in dispute is below ₹10,000 across CGST, SGST, IGST and cess together, no show-cause notice is to be issued…

Refunds on a ten-day clock

The time for acknowledging a refund claim comes down from 15 days to 10, and a claim not acknowledged in 10 days is deemed acknowledged. In the first phase, 90% of refunds for zero-rated supplies and inverted duty structures are to be sanctioned provisionally by the system…

What the small trader gets

A business with turnover up to ₹5 crore that files late pays no late fee if the return is in by the end of the month… An e-way bill consignment may be stopped only on specific intelligence… Goods in transit are no longer liable to confiscation under section 130.

Why It Matters

What India gains is a tax that behaves less like a police power and more like a system. The country’s 63 million micro, small and medium enterprises… are the taxpayers the ₹10,000 notice floor, the late-fee waiver and the 90% automatic refund were written for.

Blitz View: The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs could publish the notification calendar for these recommendations in one place, with a date against each, so that a trader knows on which day the ₹10,000 floor and the ten-day refund clock begin to run.

The Week Ahead

Six dates the desk will watch.

• 12 October
  The Navy commissions the anti-submarine craft Mangrol at the Naval Dockyard, Mumbai, Vice Admiral Sanjay Vatsyayan presiding.
• 12 October
  The Ministry of Statistics releases consumer price inflation for September, the first print after the repo rate rise.
• 14–16 Oct
  Tele-MANAS’s MANN Jaagriti activities roll out in States after World Mental Health Day.
• 20 October
  The India–New Zealand free trade agreement enters into force, with every Indian tariff line entering New Zealand at zero duty.
• 28 October
  The index of industrial production for September (MoSPI release calendar).
• November
  COP31 opens in Antalya; India’s positions were set at the Pre-COP in Fiji on 8 October.