“Top ministers are present at the meet”, the Prime Minister’s office tweeted.
Advertisement
“Former prime minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi meet PM”.
“On GST… we are hopeful, we remain hopeful”, he said while addressing the annual session of the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached out to the Congress leadership.
On Thursday, speaking exclusively to NDTV, Sonia and Rahul highlighted “three issues” on GST that they said were non-negotiable – the 1% tax for manufacturers, the constitutional cap of 18 percent for GST rate and an independent dispute resolution mechanism for GST.
Talking to reporters after the meeting, she appealed to all political parties to have a debate on more and more issues.
“I have personally discussed with nearly every leader of the Congress party, more particularly in Parliament and I am emphasising the word every leader of the Congress party”, Jaitley told Times Now news channel.
“The prime minister has invited the opposition leader at his residence”, a senior official in the Prime Minister’s Office said.
“Part of the reason to get rid of the exemption on the corporate tax side is that we want to reduce litigation – so that we don’t have to do the adversarial rent-seeking tax exercise”, he explained. It is also opposed to states being given powers to levy additional 1 per cent tax on supply of goods over and above GST rate.
Before Modi dialled Sonia this evening, Jaitley had done some spadework when he called on the Congress chief and Rahul separately to invite them for his daughter’s wedding.
Advertisement
But the government obviously worked hard to create the appropriate atmosphere for the “event”, as a BJP source said. “Consensus is more important than majority rule”. But its script went awry after the Congress regrouped much of the Opposition and blocked the government’s major legislative agenda.
