The Government is contemplating to list the crucial GST (Goods and Services Tax) Bill for discussion in the Rajya Sabha this week after a key meeting of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley with Finance Ministers of States on Tuesday.
By then the Government is also expected to make some breakthrough with the Congress, which is insisting that it will extend support to the Bill only after concerns raised by it have been addressed.
Jaitley, who has been engaged in back-channel negotiations with Congress leaders to get the main Opposition party on board, will discuss proposed amendments to the GST legislation passed by the lok Sabha at the meeting of the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers.
Senior Congress leaders and party’s chief whip in the lok Sabha Jyotiraditya Scindia said the Government is yet to reach out to the Opposition with concrete wording that all our concerns have been taken care of.
Scindia said the Congress has been demanding that the overall GST rate be capped at 18 per cent and additional one per cent tax for compensating the manufacturing States be scrapped. The party also wants a dispute resolution mechanism in the proposed law.
It has to be seen if the Empowered Committee of State FMs meeting may take up changes as demanded by the Congress in the constitutional amendment Bill, including one for scrapping of one per cent additional tax in hands of the States.
last week, MoS Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi had stated that the GST Bill will come up for discussion next week.
“We have no problem in passage of the law provided these concerned are addressed. But the problem is that the Government talks of Opposition support but it never came to us with anything concrete. They need to address these concerns and tell us that see this has been taken care of. Then, of course we will provide support to it. After all, it was the Congress only that had mooted this GST Bill about seven years ago. We would like to pass it through,” Scindia said.
The GST is a single indirect tax, which will subsume most of the Central and State taxes such as Value Added Tax (VAT), excise duty, service tax, central sales tax, additional customs duty and special additional duty of customs.
A Bill seeking to amend the Constitution and subsequent rollout of the GST is pending in Parliament for want of political consensus.
The Centre has already missed the earlier deadline of April 1, 2016 to implement the proposed tax regime.