Hope for the passage of crucial Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill during this Winter Session seems to recede as “talks” between the Centre and the Congress remained inconclusive. There was little indication from either side of a possible “breakthrough”.
With only seven days left for the Winter Session of Parliament to conclude, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu hosted a lunch for leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, Deputy leader Anand Sharma and Congress Chief Whip in the lok Sabha Jyotiraditya Scindia to discuss the issue of the GST Bill and functioning of Parliament.
The meeting took place against the backdrop of repeated adjournments of the Rajya Sabha by the Congress over National Herald case. The Congress has made it clear that the engagement between the Treasury benches and the Opposition cannot be restricted to just one issue.
Jaitley himself described the talks as a “non meeting” and later apprehended a “washout” of the current Winter Session and attacked the Congress over the disruption.
“All of us, if not always, at any rate from time to time, must have felt this high sense of responsibility and destiny to which we had been called. Whether we were worthy of it or not is another matter. We have functioned, therefore, during these five years not only on the edge of history but sometimes plunging into the processes of making history,” said Jaitley.
Taking a dig at the Congress over frequent disruptions in the Rajya Sabha, Jaitley added, “Those who claim the legacy of Pandit ji must ask themselves the question, what kind of history are they making.”
Citing absence of leader of the Congress in the lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, who was not in Delhi, the party sought another meeting with the Government. This was readily accepted by the Government, which is keen to break the logjam on this key economic reform measures.
“Today’s talks remain inconclusive. It is a work in progress. There was no structured discussion today,” Sharma said at AICC briefing. The first such meeting on the GST Bill happened after Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached out to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh just when the Winter Session had started.
Sharma, a former Commerce Minister, insisted, “Engagement between the Government and the Opposition cannot be restricted to one issue. After not engaging the Opposition for 18 months, Government is desperate to discuss with us just one Bill. First they should not be over-obsessed with one Bill as other important legislations are also pending.”
The Congress leader used the occasion to target Modi lamenting that the measure could not be passed for five long years during the UPA-II due to the Opposition by the present Prime Minister, who was then the Gujarat Chief Minister.