West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra was on Friday named the new chairman of the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers on Goods and Services Tax (GST). He will succeed Kerala Finance Minister K M Mani who had to resign in November over corruption charges. Mitra, an economist, who for long was Secretary General of industry association Ficci before joining politics in 2011 and becoming a minister in the TMC government in West Bengal, was elected at the meeting of state finance ministers that was also attended by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
He will be the second chairman of the panel, tasked with framing rules for roll out of the ambitious GST regime, which will subsume all indirect taxes and create one national market, from West Bengal. Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said Mitra was elected head of the Committee.
