Goods and Services Tax (GST), is known as the crucial tax reform in our nation since independence. A lot of speculation has been going on regarding the Indian GST Bill since the chief leader of ruling BJP and FM-Arun Jaitley had proposed the Bill last year in the Parliament. Now the NDA government is going to seriously talk on the GST bill in the Rajya Sabha in this week of winter session. But it is not possible to implement GST in the upper house of Parliament without the Congress’s support.
A new issue has also been generated by the Congress. The Congress party and other opposition parties have made a committed group of above 90 members that includes Congress (67), JD-U (12), RJD (1), IUML (1), KCM (1), CPM (9) and CPI (1). This committed block will prevent the ruling BJP party to continue conversing with all of them. The government needs two-thirds member’s support to pass the bill in the Upper House and without this group, Centre will not get the required two-third support.
Apart from this, if the NDA sets a group with other non NDA parties such as SP, BSP, BJD, TRS, TMC, NCP and even AIADMK and DMK, even then the government would not be able to collect two third majority votes.
The Centre government has already failed in their last two session attempts because of the objection of Congress. Therefore, recently, PM Modi had invited the Congress senior leaders on tea to discuss GST bill that could be rolled out only with the backing of Congress.
The congress is adamant on their three demands including scrap 1 percent inter-state tax, capping GST rate at 18% and creating an independent dispute-settlement system.
Mr. Sitaram Yechury, a leader of the Communist Party of India said, “At the time of referring GST Bill to select committee, government had agreed to inform Parliament about the details of their discussions with states. That has not happened. We want to know what government has done with the Asim Dasgupta panel proposals. While listing the bill for this week is a good salesmanship, what matters is government addressing issues raised by Opposition.”
Also Read: GST Overview: Economical Effects on Govt, Companies and Individuals
