Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday met Congress leaders in a bid to sort out differences for passage of the GST bill in Rajya Sabha and both sides agreed to meet further as the talks were inconclusive.
With just eight days left for the winter session, Mr. Jaitley and Parliamentary Affairs Minster M. Venkaiah Naidu today held consultations with Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad and Deputy Leader Anand Sharma.
Government is keen to get the bill passed in this session to facilitate the roll out of the measure from April next year. With the Houses, particularly Rajya Sabha doing minimal business in Winter Session, the government has not been able to push through its legislative agenda including GST.
The meeting today as Government decided to make a fresh bid to break the logjam. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Chief whip of Congress Jyotiraditya Scindia also joined the consultations later.
At the hour-long luncheon meeting in Mr. Naidu’s office in Parliament both sides stated their respective positions after which Mr. Naidu merely said “we will continue to meet.”
The meeting over the GST happens in the backdrop of a campaign of Congress in Parliament over National Herald case. While the main opposition party has rejected the charge that it was blocking the GST Bill because of the court summons to party president Sonia Gandhi and her deputy Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case, while BJP continues to insist there is a link between the two developments.
