E-Way Bill Rules and Limits: When One Is Required

An e-way bill is required whenever goods worth more than ₹50,000 move — by road, rail, air or vessel — in relation to a supply, for a reason other than supply such as a branch transfer or job work, or as an inward supply from an unregistered person. That ₹50,000 threshold is the central rule under Rule 138 of the CGST Rules and applies to every inter-state movement. For movement entirely within one state, the state can and often does set a higher limit.

When an e-way bill is required

Rule 138(1) frames the trigger around movement, not around sale. A registered person who causes movement of goods of consignment value exceeding ₹50,000 must generate an e-way bill before the movement starts, in three situations:

• In relation to a supply — the ordinary case of selling and despatching goods.
• For reasons other than supply — stock transfer between your own branches in different states, goods sent for job work, sale on approval, exhibition stock, line sales, goods sent for repair.
• Inward supply from an unregistered person — where you buy from someone outside GST and the goods have to move to you.

Two movements require an e-way bill irrespective of the consignment value, so the ₹50,000 test never comes into it: inter-state movement of goods by a principal to a job worker (or by a registered job worker back to the principal), and inter-state movement of handicraft goods by a person who is exempted from GST registration under the relevant notification. If your business does either of these, a ₹4,000 consignment still needs a bill.

The ₹50,000 consignment value threshold

"Consignment value" is not the same as invoice value, and getting this wrong is the single most common reason a business believes it is under the limit when it is not. It is the value determined under Section 15 of the CGST Act as declared on the invoice, bill of supply or delivery challan, including the CGST, SGST, IGST and cess charged, and excluding the value of any exempt supply where the same invoice covers both taxable and exempt goods.

So a ₹46,000 taxable consignment at 18% GST has a consignment value of ₹54,280 and needs an e-way bill, even though the pre-tax figure is comfortably under the limit. Conversely, an invoice showing ₹60,000 of which ₹20,000 is exempt goods has a consignment value of ₹40,000 for this purpose. If you are unsure which rate applies to a given item, our guide to the current GST rate slabs after the GST 2.0 reform covers the post-September 2025 structure.

Intra-state limits vary by state

This is where a lot of published "e-way bill limit" advice quietly goes wrong. Rule 138(1) lets a state or union territory notify that no e-way bill is required for movement of goods within that state below a higher value, and many have used that power. Delhi, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Bihar, Punjab and Rajasthan are among the states commonly cited as having raised the intra-state limit to ₹1 lakh, and some have layered further relaxations on top — Rajasthan for intra-city movement, several states for specific goods, and Maharashtra and West Bengal for particular movement types.

There is no reliable single national table for this, because the notifications are issued by individual state commercial tax departments and are amended independently. Two rules always hold, and everything else has to be checked:

• Inter-state movement is always at ₹50,000. A state cannot raise the threshold for goods crossing its border.
• The intra-state threshold is the one notified by the state in which the movement happens. Check the state's own commercial tax department notification, or the state-wise list published on ewaybillgst.gov.in, rather than assuming ₹50,000 or assuming ₹1 lakh.

Who generates the e-way bill

The obligation sits with the person who causes the movement, which sounds vague until you work through the cases:

Note the ex-works case: if your customer's own truck arrives at your gate, the responsibility is the customer's, not yours. Contracts should say so explicitly, because "we assumed the other side had done it" is not a defence at a check post.

Part A and Part B, and why the split matters

Form GST EWB-01 has two halves, and they do different jobs.

• Part A — GSTIN of supplier and recipient, place of delivery with PIN code, invoice or challan number and date, consignment value, HSN code, reason for transportation, and the transport document number where available. This is the commercial data and it is the part that flows into the system permanently.
• Part B — the conveyance. Vehicle number for road movement, or the transport document number and date for rail, air or vessel.

You can file Part A on its own and get a unique Part A slip, which stays available for 15 days for Part B to be added. But the e-way bill is not valid for movement until Part B is filled in, and the validity clock only starts running from the first Part B entry — which is the subject of our companion piece on e-way bill validity and the distance rule.

The one carve-out: where goods are moved within the same state for a distance of up to 50 km from the consignor's place of business to the transporter's place of business for onward transportation, Part B need not be furnished for that first leg. The same relaxation applies to the last-leg movement from the transporter to the consignee within the state.

Goods and movements that need no e-way bill

Rule 138(14) and the Annexure to Rule 138 list the cases where no e-way bill is required at all, regardless of value. The main ones:

• Goods in the Annexure — including LPG for supply to household and non-domestic exempted category customers, kerosene sold under the public distribution system, postal baggage moved by the Department of Posts, natural or cultured pearls and precious or semi-precious stones and jewellery falling under Chapter 71, currency, used personal and household effects, and unworked or worked coral. Note that Chapter 71 is a central exemption; some states have since notified their own intra-state e-way bill requirement for gold and precious stones under Rule 138F, so this one is not safe to assume nationwide.
• Non-motorised conveyance — handcart, bullock cart and the like.
• Customs movements — goods moving from a port, airport, air cargo complex or land customs station to an inland container depot or container freight station for customs clearance, goods under customs bond or customs supervision, and transit cargo to or from Nepal or Bhutan.
• The five non-GST products — alcoholic liquor for human consumption, petroleum crude, high speed diesel, motor spirit (petrol), natural gas and aviation turbine fuel.
• Exempt goods notified as such, and transactions treated as neither a supply of goods nor a supply of services under Schedule III of the CGST Act.
• Empty cargo containers, empty LPG cylinders moved for reasons other than supply, and movement to or from a weighbridge within 20 km accompanied by a delivery challan.
• Government movements — goods moved by the Ministry of Defence as consignor or consignee, and goods moved by rail where the consignor is the Central Government, a State Government or a local authority.
• Notified areas — movement within areas a state has specifically notified as exempt.

The list above is a summary, not the notification. Before relying on an exemption for a live shipment, read the current Annexure on cbic-gst.gov.in and check whether your state has narrowed it.

Non-filers get blocked from generating e-way bills

Rule 138E is the enforcement lever most businesses only discover when a shipment stops. If a registered person has not furnished returns for two consecutive tax periods — two months for a monthly filer, or two consecutive quarters for a taxpayer under QRMP or the composition scheme — the portal blocks e-way bill generation against that GSTIN.

The block is symmetrical, and that is the part that catches buyers out: nobody can generate an e-way bill with a blocked GSTIN as supplier or as recipient. A supplier who has quietly fallen behind on GSTR-3B can therefore stop your inbound consignment, with no warning and no obvious fault of yours. The block lifts once the pending returns are filed, but "once" can mean days you do not have. It is one of several reasons that a vendor's filing history is operational data, not just a compliance curiosity — see also what a suspended GSTIN status means.

Penalty for moving goods without an e-way bill

Moving goods without a valid e-way bill exposes both the goods and the conveyance to detention and seizure under Section 129 of the CGST Act. Since the amendment that took effect on 1 January 2022, the penalty is no longer "tax plus a penalty equal to tax" — it is calculated as follows:

Separately, Section 122 provides a general penalty of ₹10,000 or the tax evaded, whichever is higher, for contraventions including transporting taxable goods without the prescribed documents. The vehicle itself can be released against payment of the penalty, or on furnishing security.

Not every discrepancy is meant to attract this. CBIC Circular 64/38/2018-GST identifies a set of minor discrepancies where proceedings under Section 129 should not be initiated and a nominal penalty of ₹500 under CGST plus ₹500 under SGST applies instead: a spelling mistake in the name of the consignor or consignee where the GSTIN is correct, an error in the PIN code where the addresses are otherwise right, an error in the address of the consignee to the extent the locality is correct, an error of one or two digits in the document number, an error in the 4- or 6-digit level of the HSN where the first two digits and the tax rate are correct, and an error of one or two digits or characters in the vehicle number. If a field officer treats a two-digit vehicle number typo as a full Section 129 case, that circular is the thing to cite.

One last sequencing point. Where e-invoicing applies to your turnover band, the IRN has to be generated on the Invoice Registration Portal first; the e-way bill can then be generated from that IRN, with Part A auto-populated from the invoice data. Doing it the other way round creates a reconciliation mismatch you will meet again at GSTR-1 time.

Frequently asked questions