Rahul Gandhi complains to Prez over passage of IT Bill without discussion

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday met President Pranab Mukherjee to raise objection to the manner in which the Income Tax Amendment Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha without proper discussion.

He was accompanied by a delegation of 18 opposition parties.

"We met the President because the bill was passed through Parliament without allowing any discussion. There is a sense in the country that the voice of people is suppressed. This is being done across the country and now it has been done in Parliament House blatantly. This is not the way to run Parliamentary business," he told the media here.

Gandhi said that they submitted a memorandum to President Mukherjee while accusing the government of suppressing the opposition's voice in Parliament.

The Bill to amend the IT Act to impose tax on deposits made post-demonetisation was passed in Lok Sabha on Tuesday without discussion amid sloganeering by the opposition.

Taxation Laws (Second Amendment) Bill 2016 amends the Income-tax Act, 1961, and the Finance Act, 2016.

The government has said that the bill was brought after it came to the government's notice that some people were trying to illegally exchange the demonetised Rs. 1,000 and Rs. 500 currency notes.