The winter session of Parliament is round the corner and the Congress is warming up to counter the ruling BJP on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley met Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday. Details of the meeting are unclear. It is speculated that Mr. Jaitley informally reached out to the two Congress leaders to clear the way for the GST Bill.
Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala, however, brushed aside reports that anything political was discussed. He told
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Speaking to
From the Congress standpoint, the problematic provisions in the bill, as brought in by the BJP government, are the 1% interstate cess, high tax cap and inadequate accountability measures. Explaining the rationale behind opposing the 1% interstate cess, Mr. Shakeel said that if one product had to pass through ten different States it would be unfair to stick 10% tax on it.
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Calling the BJP-initiated GST bill “a killer bill,” Mr. Surjewala said the government was yet to shun the “no talk policy” with the Opposition and so it was hard to predict whether the bill would make it through the Rajya Sabha.