Speaker's Research Initiative also played role in GST bill

Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan today credited the Speaker's Research Initiative with playing a role in ensuring the passage of the GST bill in Parliament.
The Speaker's Research Initiative, which was started last year, provides MPs with a platform to interact with subject experts and gain information on various issues of topical interest.
"... You know we have started the Speaker's Research Initiative and Parliament members are taking interest in that. I think little bit of that effect is also there. Now they are becoming groups like thinker groups," Mahajan said here on the sidelines of inauguration of the Shramik Shiksha Bhawan.

A core group was formed to provide balanced inputs and information in the form of backgrounders that are prepared for the members.
The Speaker added that cooperation of all political parties and parliamentarians led to the passage of the GST bill.
"Everyone's cooperation... All political parties' cooperation and especially of the Parliamentary Affairs Minister," Mahajan said in reply to a question.
The GST bill, billed as the biggest tax reform since Independence, was passed by Rajya Sabha on August 3 and Lok Sabha on August 8 and shall replace a raft of different state and local taxes with a single unified value added tax system to turn the country into world's biggest single market.

The 66-year-old Constitution, which gives power to Centre to levy taxes like excise, and empowers states to collect retail sales taxes, was amended though the 122nd Constitution Amendment Bill.