Hopeful that GST Bill will be passed in monsoon session: Rudy

Union Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy today said senior Union Ministers have been negotiating with Congress leadership on the GST Bill and expressed the hope that the proposed law will be passed in the monsoon session of Parliament.
"There were demands to make improvements on some parameters. We have rectified them and the senior leadership, whether it is Venkaiah Naidu or Arun Jaitley, is regularly negotiating with the Congress party," he told reporters here.
Rudy said, "After the setback in West Bengal, Kerala and Assam, I don't think Congress' obstructionist policy is giving them any headstart across the country."
Earlier, the government had insisted that most of the parties, except the Congress, were in favour of GST which would bring about a uniform indirect taxation regime in the country.

Rudy said the bill has been approved by Lok Sabha but was pending in Rajya Sabha because of stiff resistance by the Congress.
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Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Skill
Development Rudy, Union Minister of State for Steel and Mines Vishnu Sai and BJP leader RP Singh were in Chandigarh today to present the report card of two years of the Narendra Modi government at a press conference here.
Replying to a query regarding the opposition's allegation of BJP going back on its poll promise of bringing back black money stashed abroad, Rudy said different agencies were at work and the government too was putting in a sound legislative process.

The minister, meanwhile, listed out the achievements of the Modi government in the last two years.
He said, "Make in India will not happen unless we have makers in India. That is the basic challenge we are facing."
On phasing out of some redundant laws, the minister said, "125 of such statutes have been repealed. The process to repeal 1,000 of such Acts and laws is going on."
He said that phasing out such laws would also help bring down the number of pending cases in courts.
The minister said after the Direct-Benefit-Transfer scheme for LPG cylinders was launched, one crore connections were either surrendered or found to be fictitious and thus, the government has saved Rs 15,000 crore.

Likewise, he said, a huge number of fake ration cards too were detected in the last two years after opening of accounts was made mandatory. This way, the government saved Rs 10,000 crore which, he said, would be used for betterment of the country's poor, farmers, labourers and weaker sections.
As regards the Jan Dhan scheme, Rudy said 20 crore accounts have been opened involving transactions of Rs 33,000 crore.