Concerned over regular disruptions in the Rajya Sabha during the past week, with the Opposition protesting against Union minister V.K. Singh’s “dog” remark in the context of the killing of two dalit children in a Haryana village and choosing to boycott him in Parliament, the government is running against time to get the Goods and Services Tax (GST) bill, which is pending in the Upper House, cleared.
If political observers are to be believed, the Congress is keen to get the GST legislation — which is a Constitution Amendment Bill — further delayed by another financial year. Once the legislation comes into force, indirect taxes — especially the service tax (which is already 14 per cent) — are likely to swell further by four per cent. This will have a severe impact on inflation, and this will be made into an issue by the Congress for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, sources added.
Though in a clear move aimed at diluting the objections to the GST bill by the Opposition, the panel on the new tax regime headed by chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian, has suggested the revenue-neutral rate of GST around 15 per cent to 15.50 per cent, the logjam on the legislation remains as of now.
With the Congress opposed to some key aspects of the GST bill, its rollout date of April 1, 2016 now seems highly unlikely, and if it gets implemented a year later, i.e. April 1, 2017 then the inflationary impact of the decision is likely to be one of the key issues of the Lok Sabha polls of 2019. Thus, it is evidently clear that the opposition to the bill is more of a political nature than driven by economics.
As the Winter Session is almost half-way through, the repeated obstructions in the Rajya Sabha have sent the NDA floor managers into a tizzy and hectic parleys have been conducted by the government with several Congress leaders in the past few days.
The government’s urgency on the GST bill can be seen from the fact that the Business Advisory Committee of the Rajya Sabha has allotted four hours for the consideration and passage of the GST bill.
The remaining 13 working days of the Winter Session, especially this week’s proceedings in the Rajya Sabha therefore assume a lot of significance, as the government will try and get the delayed legislation cleared during the coming days.
However, if the GST bill passage alone is not problematic enough, there are as many as 13 more bills lying pending for clearance in the Upper House.
The legislative business transacted so far during the Winter session has been limited to passage of merely two bills - Carriage by Air (Amendment)
Bill, 2015 and The Bureau of Indian Standards Bill, 2015 in the Lok Sabha.
These were just two out of the five bills which were pending in Lok Sabha and three still remain to be cleared. Overall, the Government has to introduce 16 new bills in Parliament, out of which it has been able to introduce only one - the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill, 2015 - in the Lok Sabha.
According to Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, GST Bill and the Real Estate Bill are on the list of Government Business in the Rajya Sabha during the week commencing Monday (December 7).
