Chandigarh, Aug 5 (IANS) The Bhagwant Mann Cabinet on Wednesday gave consent to the Punjab Protection of Trees Bill of 2026 to maintain green cover for ensuring ecological balance, prevent pollution of the environment, provide an institutional mechanism to compensate for the environmental loss caused by the felling of trees and conserve the soil.
Punjab is an agrarian state with about 83 per cent of its area under agriculture.
The total area under forest and tree cover is about 5.92 per cent, and the state government has set a target to enhance it to 7.5 per cent by 2030.
The Cabinet also gave approval to further amend the Punjab Goods and Services Tax (Amendment) Bill of 2026 to promote voluntary compliance, reduce litigation, and streamline Goods and Services Tax (GST) procedures, thereby benefiting trade and industry across the state.
The amendment will allow exclusion of post-sale discounts from the value of supply through issuance of a credit note without the requirement of a prior agreement.
Further, it will allow issuance of credit notes for post-sale discounts for any commercial reason, thereby simplifying trade discount adjustments and reducing compliance burden.
Likewise, it also aims to extend the benefit of 90 per cent provisional refund of ITC in cases of inverted duty structure and allow refund of IGST paid on exports of goods even where the refund amount is below Rs 1,000, thereby improving liquidity and facilitating exports.
The Cabinet also gave concurrence to amend the Punjab Panchayati Raj Act of 1994 to streamline the functioning of the Rural Development Department and merge the cadres of Panchayat Secretaries and Gram Sewaks to create a new cadre of Panchayat Development Secretary.
The Panchayat Secretaries, upon submission of a self-declaration, will be placed at the tail of the existing seniority list of Gram Sewaks. The existing Panchayat Secretaries who fail to submit the required self-declaration within one month from the date of issue of the notification will continue to remain in the cadre of Panchayat Secretaries, which has been declared as a dying cadre.
–IANS
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