Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa today slammed the UPA government for proposing to introduce without consensus the Constitution Amendment Bill on Goods and Services Tax regime.
In his reaction to the Union budget, Mr. Yeddyurappa flayed the government for the move to introduce the bill without consensus and trying to push GST regime without addressing the State’s concerns.
State’s Finance Secretary L V Nagarajan, present at the Chief Minister’s news conference, said the State has doubts about certain provisions and these need to be sorted out.
Karnataka wanted a band for GST rates to raise resources to meet exigencies like drought, instead of the proposed two rates; in addition, there were issues to be sorted out in terms of items that should come under GST, and those to be excluded.
Mr. Yeddyurappa said the budget was big on announcements but not supported by appropriate allocations. He said overall increase in plan allocation by 12.4 per cent was barely sufficient to take care of high inflation.
Specific steps had not been taken to tackle high inflation, he said. Allocation for agriculture has gone down by three per cent.
He said decrease in fertiliser subsidy would mean higher prices. There was no increase in food subsidy, while subsidy for petroleum products had been reduced. “With international prices (for crude) going up, people should get ready for higher prices (for petroleum products)”, Mr. Yeddyurappa said.
With lesser subsidy for fertilisers, food and petroleum products, inflation is inevitable,” Mr. Yeddyurappa said.
The Chief Minister expressed disappointment that allocation for States had only gone up by a mere 9.5 per cent to Rs 1,12,092 crore.
