E-way bill limit in Punjab: ₹1,00,000 intra-state
Punjab requires an e-way bill for movement that begins and ends inside the state only when the consignment value exceeds ₹1,00,000 — twice the ₹50,000 that applies the moment the goods cross a state border. The figure comes from Notification No. PA/ETC/2018/175 dated 13 September 2018, effective 13 September 2018.
Frequently asked questions
What is the e-way bill limit in Punjab?
₹1,00,000 of consignment value, for movement that begins and ends inside Punjab. The test is whether the value exceeds that figure, so a consignment of exactly ₹1,00,000 still needs no bill. Anything crossing the state border is tested at the national ₹50,000 limit instead.
Do I need an e-way bill for ₹90,000 from Ludhiana to Amritsar?
No. ₹90,000 is below the ₹1,00,000 threshold and both Ludhiana and Amritsar are inside Punjab, so the movement falls outside the requirement. The invoice still travels with the goods — being exempt from the e-way bill is not the same as being exempt from paperwork.
What if the same consignment goes from Ludhiana to Haryana instead?
That one needs an e-way bill. Crossing into Haryana makes it an inter-state movement, and inter-state movement is tested at ₹50,000 regardless of which state it started in or what that state's own intra-state threshold is. This is the mistake state thresholds cause most often: ₹1,00,000 is remembered as the answer, when it is only the answer for movement that stays inside Punjab.
How many days of validity does a Punjab consignment get?
Validity is national rather than state-specific, so a bill for goods moving from Ludhiana to Amritsar follows the same rule as anywhere else: one day for up to 200 km and one additional day for every 200 km or part of it, counted from generation and expiring at midnight of the day after generation. Over-dimensional cargo, and multimodal shipments with at least one leg by ship, get one day per 20 km. The distance that counts is the PIN-to-PIN distance the portal computes between the dispatch and destination PIN codes — not the road distance the transporter quotes — so a route that looks like two days on the highway can still be billed as three.
What value does Punjab test — the invoice total or the taxable value?
The consignment value declared on the invoice, bill of supply or delivery challan, including CGST, SGST, IGST and cess. Where one invoice covers both taxable and exempt goods, the exempt line comes out of the figure. For a Punjab movement the number to compare against the threshold is therefore the document total, not the taxable value alone and not what the goods would fetch if resold — and because it is a document test, it is the figure a check-post officer reads off the paperwork rather than the one in your head.
Does the GST state code matter for a Punjab consignment?
Punjab is GST state code 03, the first two digits of every GSTIN issued there. It matters because the code on the supplier's GSTIN has to match the place of supply for the tax split to be right, and a mismatch is one of the things that turns a routine check-post stop into a longer one.