A Jaipur resort has filed a formal complaint (FIR) against the holiday booking website OYO, claiming that OYO gave “incorrect” information that resulted in the issuance of GST notices totaling crores. According to Samskara Resorts’ Madan Jain, the company was served with a GST show-cause notice for Rs 2.66 crore. He said in the FIR that thousands of fictitious reservations were made under Samskara Resort’s name in order to boost the annual sales.
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Oravel Stays Private Limited (OYO), its founder and group CEO Ritesh Agarwal, and a number of other individuals are included in the FIR, which was filed under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), and they are accused of conspiracy, forgery, cheating, and criminal breach of trust.
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Madan Jain said in the FIR that OYO recorded fake reservations, some of which predated their agreement, in order to increase Samskara Resort’s sales. According to the report, Samskara inked a 12-month contract with OYO on April 18, 2019, during which time the resort only made ₹10.95 lakh in reservations and paid the relevant GST.
However, the GST authorities demanded ₹2.66 crore in unpaid taxes and penalties after OYO reportedly reported a business volume of ₹22.22 crore. OYO is accused of recording reservations for Samskara Resort for the fiscal years 2018–19, 2019–20, and 2020–21, even though there was no agreement in place at the time.
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About 20 hotels received notifications after OYO was accused by Hussain Khan, the head of the Hotel Federation of Rajasthan, of sending the GST office inflated bills. “We had a campaign against OYO four years ago, with 125 hotels putting up banners outside saying that we are not accepting OYO bookings,” he told the Indian Express, citing the company’s “bad record.”
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