GST could have been implemented after trial run: Singhvi

Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi Friday said the implementation of GST was about "egos"and it was executed hastily since Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted to have his "tryst with midnight speech".

He was speaking at the release of a book titled Ground Scorching Tax by Arun Kumar.

"There could have been a methodology of a pilot or a six-month trial run for GST. A six-month trial run would have led to nitty gritty details that could have inspired to defer, recast it...I had no doubt or hesitation that it was egos.

"The prime minister had to have his tryst with the midnight speech. We all had to be awake not to joy and glory like in 1947, but to harassment," the Congress spokesperson said.

Singhvi said "date became sacrosanct" and "was the anti-thesis of any trial run" and got mixed up with "jumlebaazi".

Referring to Union minister Jayant Sinha's comments after the implementation of Goods and Services Tax where he called it a 'grand Indian wedding', Singhvi said it was a "strange wedding where the bride was sad and unhappy, groom miserable, and the baraat depressed and only the purohit was very happy".

"Interestingly, the same purohit, when he did a wedding on a smaller scale in Gujarat, was heavily opposed to this idea," he added.