Will GST Bill be deferred? HC to decide ‘soon’

With just a day left for the rolling out of the Goods and Service Tax (GST), Bombay High Court on Thursday reserved its orders on PIL that has sought deferment of the Bill till next financial year.

Division Bench of Justice Vijaya Tahilramani and Justice Sandeep Shinde heard the PIL filed by Dr KS Pillai (63), a retired professor from King Edward Memorial Hospital, Parel. The PIL intends to highlight the flaws in the procedure in which the Union government has proposed to implement the GST Tax.

Dr Pillai has raised an objection to the implementation of the GST bill which is proposed by the government on July 1, 2017. He has raised an objection as to if the Union government can implement such major “constitutional changes” of tax reforms in middle of a financial year; that, too, without proper preparation.

“Implementation in the middle of the financial year will result in maladjustments among government departments. The implementation must at least be as per the global conventional financial year so that world can follow our system successfully,” Dr Pillai said.

Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Anil Singh, told the Bench that the decision to implement GST was approved by Parliament and that this new tax system will benefit the public at large. He also said as long as the government has a sanction from Parliament, no law can prohibit it from implementing GST at any point in the year.

“Nearly 60,000 officials are trained to operate the new system. There are help desks, telephonic helplines set up by the Union and state governments to ensure that there are no technical glitches in migrating tax payers to the new system,” ASG Singh said.

He informed the Bench that a total of 65 lakh taxpayers have been shifted to the new tax system.