Reacting on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) issue, he said that for the past seven years the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stopped the GST in Parliament and this fact could be verified.
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Sharma cited Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh, and later meeting of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley with other Congress leaders as BJP’s attempts to forge a consensus on the GST Bill and not for anything else.
“Jaitley does not have to tell me GST is good”. I want to know where have these lakhs of crores of money, which have been saved on account of lower oil prices, have gone? He further said his party did not want a cap on the tax and a fair and neutral dispute resolution.
Terming Congress as a “very complicated party, Rahul asked party workers to draw inspiration from the leadership of late stalwart Murli Deora, and take everybody along, but also warned against any act of indiscipline. You can’t have start-ups and be intolerant at the same time”, Gandhi said. “But for the BJP -RSS, they categorise and there is a Hindu, Muslim, Sikh for them; for me, there is only Indians, nobody else”, he added. “After 26/11, we isolated Pakistan diplomatically, but this government deals with them in an adhoc manner”. He also said that the RSS has a very “rigid vision” for India and that start-ups require free movement of ideas.
“We (Congress) are not just 40 plus people in Lok Sabha we are 20 per cent vote of the country”, Gandhi said. Clad in casual jeans and tee-shirt, Gandhi urged the students not to put “labels on people, industry or things, as labels are human inventions” and stifle growth.
To a query on India’s development compared to that of China, Gandhi said, “It’s pretty clear that China today is more powerful and economically stronger”.
“Saying this is a Hindu, this is a Muslim, this is a woman…hides values”, he said.
While addressing management students in Vile Parle, Gandhi said there is a contradiction in pushing for startups and being “intolerant”.
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Taking on Mr Gandhi for his criticism of the government for allegedly mishandling the Pathankot terror attack, he said, “a non-serious and part-time politician like Rahul Gandhi should introspect before speaking on serious national security matters”. Asked how could India help provide conducive atmosphere for start ups, Gandhi said, “Start ups require a whole set of eco systems that allows entrepreneurs to grow including infrastructure and regulation. “In India we didn’t kill millions of people”. He reminded the audience that the BJP had blocked Parliament when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was in power for a decade.
