West Bengal Assembly passes SGST bill

Kolkata: The state Assembly on Tuesday passed the State Goods and Services Tax (SGST) Bill, 2017, even as chief minister Mamata Banerjee said her party’s ideological position on GST would not alter.

“The common people are facing problems and since we value democracy, the party will stand by the masses,” she said after the Bill was passed. “The Centre could have fed many poor people with the money that has gone into ads for creating awareness about GST... The country is now in an acute crisis,” she said.

The state had issued an ordinance in June end to facilitate treasury operations by government from July 1, the date of implementation of the new tax regime across the country. Ms Banerjee said the government had “no option” but to issue the ordinance on GST as the state would have been unable to conduct treasury operations otherwise. “The state government is sitting before the nozzle of a gun and the Central government machinations forced us to do that,” she said. 

She added that the state government was  against the hasty implementation of GST and had urged the Centre to postpone it by two months. “But we were really hard-pressed and so the ordinance had to be issued.”

The government, she said, needed money to pay salaries, make developmental expenditure and others. As the ordinance had a definite lifetime, it had to be ultimately ratified by the Assembly. She said that owing to many objections raised by state finance minister Amit Mitra at the GST Council meetings, taxes on many items of common use had been lowered. 

Crediting former finance minister Asim Dasgupta, also the chairman of the empowered committee of finance ministers on GST then, for preparing the initial draft, she, however, decried his midnight presence in the Parliament session when the new tax regime was formally introduced.