“We have always supported the GST. We are trying to win support from all the parties”, Minister of State for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal said on the sidelines of a national summit on “Finance for Housing for All”, organised by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham).
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Kumar is learnt to have expressed similar sentiments on the GST during his one-to-one meeting with the finance minister as well. “Our party fully supports it”, the JD(U) chief told reporters after the meeting. After the Constitution Amendment Bill is passed, there are three more legislations- Central GST (CGST), State GST (SGST) and Integrated GST (IGST) – which need to be passed.
Although the NDA is in a minority in the Upper House, it has managed to divide the opposition by winning support for the GST from regional parties such as the Samajwadi Party which has 19 MPs, Bahujan Samaj Party (6), Janata Dal (United) (10), Nationalist Congress Party (5) and Rashtriya Janata Dal (3).
On whether the party was invited for more consultations, he said as of now he had no information regarding any further invitation by the government for a meeting. A couple of options, according to experts working with the government on GST, are to mention the rate in the GST Bill that the Centre and states have to separately legislate or make it incumbent upon the GST Council to strongly recommend the least rate.
The government, however, sounded optimistic about a consensus emerging among political parties on passage of the GST bill.
“We are ready to go the extra mile to build consensus over this bill”, he had said.
The government, which has agreed to a five hour debate on the GST bill in the Rajya Sabha, is keen to get the law passed during the current Monsoon Session of Parliament that ends on August 12.
GST Bill, which intends to convert 29 states into a single market through a new indirect tax regime, was earlier planned to be introduced from April 1 this year, but the deadline was missed as the Bill to roll it out remains in a limbo in the Opposition-dominated Rajya Sabha.
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“While the issue of 1 per cent additional rate and redressal mechanism is more or less solved, the demand for capping the GST rate in the Constitution amendment bill is not practical”, Meghwal said. Then, Parliament must pass another bill to implement GST.
