Congress conditions for supporting GST an after-thought: FM

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today rejected the conditions put forward by Congress for supporting the landmark GST legislation saying these are an "after-thought" and were not a part of the bill that the party had itself introduced.
"I do not think it is very part of prudent politics for any party to put pre-conditions, particularly on a matter which involves a fiscal relationship between the Centre and the states," Jaitley told reporters here.
He was replying to a question about the three pre-conditions put forth by former Finance Minister P Chidambaram for Congress supporting GST.
"All these three decisions are unanimous decisions of all the states to which the Congress party states are privy. So it is clear that these three pre-conditions are an after thought," Jaitley said.

Indirect tax reform GST proposes to create an uniform tax rate across the country by subsuming excise, service tax and other local levies. GST is estimated to boost India's GDP by 1-2 per cent. The government has proposed to introduce the new regime from April 1, 2016.
Due to disruption by opposition Congress, the government could not get the GST Constitution Amendment Bill passed in the Monsoon session of Parliament which ended yesterday.

Jaitley said the first conditionality of a constitutional cap of 18 per cent on GST rate was not Chidambaram's proposal in the Bill as approved by him after the Standing Committee recommendation in 2013.

"Nor the then Finance Minister's (Pranab Mukherjee's) proposal, when he introduced the bill in 2011 had any 18 per cent cap. So that is clearly an after-thought," he said.
Jaitley said the rates would be decided depending on the fiscal position and economic situation, and Constitution need not be amended to alter them.