Taking a swipe at the Centre and the state government on their boasting of having rolled out the ‘historic’ GST, the former Chief Minister and the senior Congress leader Harish Rawat said that in tune with double engine development pledge made by the Prime Minister, Uttarakhand should seek one-year relief from GST. “Besides, the GST registration limit for annual turnovers should be `20 lakh for the business community based in Uttarakhand as it is a Himalayan State. Moreover, the State would compensate 42 percent excise duty imposed under the GST regime on the industries which have come up here under the industrial package,” he said.
While interacting with media persons at Rajiv Bhawan, Rawat said that Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat being young should be used for the betterment of the State. “Now, a young CM is leading the state and so the pace of the state’s development should be double than what it was under me. I am much older than the present CM,” he said.
He defended his party high command’s decision to stay away from the rolling- out ceremony. “Anybody can become Prime Minster. But comparing one with the first PM Pt Jawaharlal Nehru is preposterous,” he said while referring to the PM comparing the special session convened to roll out GST with the historic occasion of Pt Nehru addressing the constituent assembly on the intervening night of August 14 and 15 1947, declaring that India became free at the stroke ofmidnight when the world was sleeping.