In a bid to improve Goods and Services Tax (GST) collections, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has reworked its strategy to meet the monthly collection target.

Sources privy to the developments told CNBC-TV18 that CBIC, as part of its latest strategy, using a series of measures including smart data analytics has identified entities, which were either not paying GST or were just delaying their returns.

"For the first time, last month, when the collections were being received for December, a special exercise was undertaken after which CBIC had identified 30,000 entities who were not filing their returns, thus ringing serious alarm bells," said people familiar with the matter.

“Centre then prepared a detailed database of these 30,000 and shared with field formations reaching out to them to make sure they make timely payments and settle the pending returns,” sources added.

Involved in this exercise is a special team housed in CBIC, which shall be repeating this every month, sources said.

"This yielded close to over Rs 6,000 crore of GST dues, which were collected in the last three days of January helping the government cross the Rs 1 lakh crore mark," said people familiar with the matter.

Government’s GST collections have been lagging behind the monthly average target which is pegged at a lakh crore.

In this fiscal, the government has seen this magical number only twice, first in September – Rs 1,00,710 crore and the next in December when collections crossed Rs 1,02,500 crore.

Let’s see whether this strategy helps the government any further to it will again have to go back to the drawing board.