Himachal passes state GST Bill

SHIMLA Himachal Pradesh Vidhan Sabha on Saturday passed the state goods and services tax (GST) bill. Members of ruling and Opposition parties were engaged in a war to take credit for GST.

After the House assembled, chief minister Virbhadra Singh tabled the bill saying that indirect tax reform in India started in the mid eighties with the introduction of modified value added tax (MODVAT) on select commodities falling under the ambit of central excise in the year 1986. In the year 1991, a tax reform committee under Raja Chelliah was set-up, which submitted its report in the 1993, recommending the major tax reforms.

Virbhadra said it was P Chidambaram, the then Union finance minister, who in his budget speech for the year 2006-2007 proposed to move towards a national-level goods and services tax. “He proposed April 1, 2010, as the date for introduction of GST. Thereafter, the empowered committee of the state finance ministers released the first discussion paper on November 10, 2009 and recommended dual GST model for India,” he added.

Further crediting Congress for evolving consensus, the chief minister (CM) said, “Lastly, the Congress convinced the government to accept its demands to scrap the 1% additional levy on supply of the goods and for giving more teeth to the grievances redressal mechanism.”

Participating in the debate, former CM and leader of Opposition Prem Kumar Dhumal termed it as the biggest economic reform of independent India.

He said the new system has subsumed number of taxes. He claimed that 150 countries have implemented the GST system and their gross domestic product has increased by 2%.

The two-day special session of the assembly was organised to discuss the revenue projections that had been highlighted in the state budget announced earlier, with the view of benefitting from the “consumer-friendly” tax regime, as portrayed by Union finance minister Arun Jaitley.