President of the Indian National Congress party-Sonia Gandhi and ex-PM Mr. Manmohan visited the PM house on Friday evening as the current PM Modi invited them on tea to discuss about the GST Bill that is government’s most vital tax reform.
After the meeting, Finance Minister, Mr. Arun Jaitley told the reporters, “The PM discussed the GST bill with the Congress which conveyed its three objections over which there were further discussions. The Congress will discuss the government’s response to their three objections within the party after which the two sides will further discuss.”
In this GST meeting, chief leaders of both parties were present namely- PM Narendra Modi, FM Jaitley, Union Minister Venkaish Naidu, Congress president Sonia Gandi and ex-PM Manmohan. It is the first face to face meeting of Congress and BJP since Narendra Modi has become India’s Prime Minister. But the second most important leader of Congress, Rahul Gandhi did not come in the meeting.
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On the other side, Congress’s Anand Sharma said, “Our demands are non-political, we’re only thinking in nation’s interest and want GST which is meaningful.”
Rahul Gandhi also told, “This meeting is happening after public pressure.”
Before this meeting, PM Modi spoke in the winter session of Parliament, “Consensus is more important than majority rule.”
In the meeting, Sonia Gandhi had repeatedly mentioned their three issues on GST- decrease the GST rate at 18 percent, scrapping 1 percent inter-state tax (CST) and free dispute resolution system for GST panel.
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Congress said, they will not compromise, till the Centre does not accept our demands. Therefore, Jaitley resisted that our government had already talked to the main Congress’s leaders regarding GST Bill.
The Central government has fixed the deadline of April 1 2016 to roll-out the GST, but deadline may be missed if the Opposition party does not agree, because the Congress has more majority in the upper house (Rajya Sabha) of Parliament than BJP. Therefore, the agreement of Congress is really essential to implement the Bill.
