The Congress will lead several Opposition parties in boycotting the function in Parliament on Friday night to mark the implementation of the historic Goods and Services Tax (GST). Senior Ministers Arun Jaitley and Venkaiah Naidu have urged the Opposition parties to reconsider their decision saying the landmark indirect tax reform was a result of joint decisions and they cannot run away from it now.
“The Congress party has decided to boycott the Parliament’s midnight Session to roll out GST on June 30,” senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said at the AICC Press briefing.
Azad said the Congress and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will not participate. Manmohan had tried to make GST a reality during his ten-year tenure. The Trinamool Congress, the left parties and the RJD have already announced their decision to skip the function.
President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the Parliamentarians to formally launch the GST.
“The midnight session of Parliament was held only thrice, starting with August 15, 1947. In 1972, the session was held to mark the silver jubilee and the third time it was for the golden jubilee of our Independence,” Azad said, adding, “Maybe 1947 has no relevance for the BJP, because they played no role in the freedom struggle.”
He said the other reason for skipping the function was the fact that the BJP was in a hurry to roll out the tax reform without any ground work, which was neither conducive for traders nor for consumers.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Information and Broadcasting Minister Venkaiah Naidu appealed to the Congress and left parties to reconsider their decision to boycott the gala GST launch.
Urging the Opposition parties to “display broad shoulders”, Jaitley said they should not “disassociate” from the decision they were a party to. The GST, which will unify a dozen State and Central levies to weave India into one market, is the biggest tax reform since India’s Independence, he told reporters here.
Hundreds of decisions on GST, including rules as also the tax rates were taken by consensus in the GST Council which comprises not just the Centre but also representatives of all States run by different political parties, he said.
“I can say this without fear of contradiction that there has never been this (kind of) exercise, of this kind of political consultation and political consensus in bringing the GST,” he said.
Jaitley said a party to such consultation and decision-making process must also accept that GST is not just a decision of the Central Government but an equal decision of 31 States and UTs.
“They must now display broad shoulders and own up to these decisions. Symbolic boycotts are not an evidence of any kind of disassociation from these decisions,” he said.
Echoing similar views, Naidu advised political parties not to politicize GST, saying the country was bound to benefit hugely from the tax initiative in the long run. “The long-term effects of the GST will be highly beneficial for the country’s economy but it may have initial, short-term negative effects on, inflation and the GDP,” Naidu said at a Press conference here.
The Congress’ decision to skip the mega function came after Congress president Sonia Gandhi met Manmohan Singh along with other leaders. The party was in a dilemma over attending the special midnight event in Parliament on June 30 to mark the implementation of GST and has had wide-ranging discussions with other parties also, which are likely to follow suit.
Sources said Congress leaders weighed its options as a group within the party felt that the GST was the party’s brainchild that has been now taken over by the ruling BJP, and thus favoured attending the special meeting.
However, some leaders opposing it feel that the GST is being implemented in haste and all aspects have not been taken into consideration, leading to harassment of small traders and businessmen and thus, the party should abstain.
Sources also said that the Congress was apparently irked with Modi trying to emulate India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s midnight “tryst with destiny” speech on the eve of Independence.
CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury has already questioned the Government on “hurrying” into introducing GST and recalled that the ruling BJP had opposed the system when it was in the Opposition.
“The left will not be participating in the midnight GST meeting. People are agitating across the county. There are serious apprehensions in the minds of people over GST’s implementation. We cannot be celebrating when people are agitating,” the Rajya Sabha member said.