GST Basics #1: Section 1 of the CGST Act - What the Law Is Called, Where It Applies, and When It Began

The first post in our section-by-section GST series. Section 1 looks trivial, but it settles three things every later dispute depends on: the name of the Act, the territory it covers, and the exact date each provision came alive.

Every GST notice you receive quotes a section number. This series walks through them one at a time, in plain language, starting at the beginning.

Section 1 of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 has only three sub-sections, and each one does a job.

Sub-section (1) gives the Act its name. That matters because GST is not one law but four running in parallel: the CGST Act for the Centre's half, a State GST Act for each state's half, the UTGST Act for union territories without a legislature, and the IGST Act for inter-state supplies and imports. When you supply goods within Chennai, you charge CGST and TNGST together. When you supply to Bengaluru, you charge IGST instead. The same rate in total, a different statute. The section numbers in the TNGST Act mirror the CGST Act almost exactly, which is why a Madras High Court ruling on Section 73 reads the same under either.

Sub-section (2) says the Act extends to the whole of India. It originally carved out Jammu and Kashmir, and that carve-out was removed within a week of rollout by the Central Goods and Services Tax (Extension to Jammu and Kashmir) Act, 2017, effective 8 July 2017.

Sub-section (3) is the one that actually bites. The Act did not come into force on the day Parliament passed it. It said the Central Government would notify commencement dates, and expressly allowed different dates for different provisions. So the Act was enacted on 12 April 2017, the definitions and registration machinery was brought into force ahead of the rest through Notification No. 1/2017-Central Tax, and the charging provisions followed on 1 July 2017 through Notification No. 9/2017-Central Tax.

Why this still matters in 2026: whenever you argue that a provision could not apply to a transaction, the first question is when that specific provision commenced. A section that was not in force on the date of supply cannot be used against you, and the commencement footnote printed under each section on the CBIC portal is the place to check. The same logic runs through every later amendment. Section 128A itself only came into force on 1 November 2024.

The bare text of every section, with its commencement footnote and amendment history, is published by CBIC on its tax information portal at https://taxinformation.cbic.gov.in

Next in this series: Section 2, the definitions that decide most GST disputes before they start.

Topics:Section 1 CGST ActGST basicsCGST SGST IGST differenceGST for beginnersCGST Act 2017GST commencement dateTNGST ActGST sections explainedlearn GSTNotification 1/2017-Central TaxNotification 9/2017-Central TaxChennai GST

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