No meeting of GST council called in last 6 months: Punjab FM

The GST council had not met in the last six months in violation of its personal guidelines {that a} meeting must be held as soon as each quarter, Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal mentioned in a letter to the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. He mentioned the Centre appeared to have usurped all of the powers of the States.

The meeting assumed significance with COVID-19 considerably impacting the financial system and key choices on waiver of GST on implements similar to sanitizers and masks wanted to be taken urgently, he mentioned.

The States have the deciding rights in the GST council. But with no meeting in the last six months, Mr. Badal mentioned, many provisions have been enacted in current occasions by the route of subordinate laws (Rules). Mr. Badal additionally identified that the delegation of the authority to the Committee of Officers or GST Implementation Committee was meant for mundane issues and to not deliver substantive modifications.

“We are feeling cheated today,” Mr. Badal mentioned at a digital press convention called by the Congress, explaining that the States have the deciding rights in the GST council. GST revenues, he mentioned, constituted almost 50 p.c of the tax revenues of the States.

“Failure to hold any constructive consultation with States for so long in such critical times makes me wonder whether the Centre has usurped all the power of States putting the spirit of cooperative federalism- that formed the very foundation of achieving consensus on the epic reform – on the backburner,” Mr. Badal wrote in the letter to Ms. Sitharaman.

He mentioned the Central authorities in 5 years of the GST implementation had not allowed the appointment of a vice chairman of the council who’s to be chosen from the State Finance Ministers. “A vice chairman could have been the State governments portal to register their complaints and feedback.” This place had not been constituted, he acknowledged, regardless of a number of requests from varied States.

Without any vigil from the States, the federal government was resorting to “coercive tax collection”, with officers resorting to threats of arrest, provisional attachment of productive property and freezing of financial institution accounts with none established norms.

There was an pressing must revisit the GST guidelines. “In Punjab, there is a saying that if you have no one to consult, consult a wall. Here, in the middle of the pandemic, the government is not speaking to the States,” he noticed.

There had been many ambiguities in the present GST regime that had been resulting in pile-up of litigations, which wanted to be sorted, he added.