Govt hasn’t engaged us on GST: Cong

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 28

Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram today said the government was yet to engage the Congress on the Goods and Services Tax Bill adding that his party’s position on the tax reform remains what it was.

“My party’s position on the GST Bill is clear. We have raised three principal objections. The government must engage the Opposition on these objections. Either the government should convince us that our objections are ill-founded or it should be convinced that they are well-founded,” he said when asked what he thought of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s recent remarks that the government cannot wait endlessly for the Congress to come on board on the law.

Chidambaram said the Congress had communicated its objections to the government in writing, but it had not come back on the issue. “Such a dialogue has not yet taken place across the table,” he said on the Bill which the government hopes to bring on the very first day of the monsoon session.

Addressing reporters on the completion of two years of the BJP government, he said failure to create jobs was the most notable failure of the Narendra Modi government. He said the government had the responsibility to explain how its new methodology of calculating the GDP growth numbers is correct considering many experts have raised doubts on it.