This is a very important question that you have asked and it has far-reaching consequences, we’ll help you understand how!

As of now, GSTN has mandated only GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B for normal taxpayers to claim input tax credit.

While GSTR-3B is a summary return which contains high-level information on purchases and sales, GSTR-1 is a detailed return which contains GSTIN wise summary of taxable supplies.

Now GSTR-2 is a counter-party return which will auto-populate the information from supplier’s GSTR-1, this has been deferred as of now.

Whatever declaration is made in GSTR-3B is provided as provisional credit in good faith.

Few of the traders tried to take advantage of it and filed returns with wrong credit (fake purchase records), however, the IT system is as robust as it can be and it can easy track which all traders are misreporting as they have wider access to purchase and sale data across the supply chain.

So whoever is misreporting the GST credit assuming GSTR-2 is not applicable, they are just creating more chaos for themselves.

Hope it clarifies the doubt.