God’s sake, do your job: Pranab targets Opp

SIGNALLING A decisive push towards “less cash” and more digital transactions, the Centre on Thursday announced a slew of incentives including a waiver of service tax on digital payments amounting to less than Rs 2,000, discounts on petrol and diesel purchases, suburban railway tickets and insurance policies bought from state-owned insurance companies through electronic means.

This comes a month after the government announced its decision to cancel the legal tender of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.

Among the measures, the Central government departments and Central public sector undertakings will bear the cost of the transaction fees and merchant discount rates (MDR) — charges that are levied on customers on card transactions. There is no end date for these incentives for now, the cost of which will be borne by respective government departments.

Announcing these measures, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said there has been a movement towards digital transactions from cash transactions since the government announced its decision to cancel the old notes. “This switchover is visible in this last one month. The government wants to increase the pace of this switchover,” he said. He, however, said it was difficult to quantify how much will be the shift in cash payments towards digital payments.

As of September 2016, the number of credit cards with individuals was 2.68 crore and debit cards at 72.8 crore, according to RBI data. Nearly 14 lakh railway passengers are buying tickets everyday out of which 58% tickets are bought online through digital means while a total of Rs 1,800 crore worth of petrol and diesel is sold in the country in a day, of which 20 per cent was being paid through digital means. The total service tax collection during 2015-16 was Rs 2,09,774 crore, as per budget estimates for 2015-16. TARGETING THE Opposition for not letting Parliament function, President Pranab Mukherjee Thursday said disruptions amount to “gagging the majority” as it is “only the minority which disrupts” and “the chair has no option but to adjourn” proceedings. Stating that the floor of the House is not the place for dharnas for which “streets are still available”, he told parliamentarians “for God’s sake, do your job”.

Delivering the fourth Defence Estates Day lecture on ‘Electoral Reforms for a Stronger Democracy’, Mukherjee, a veteran parliamentarian who became President, said disruption of the House is “totally unacceptable in the parliamentary system”.

“People send their representatives to speak, not to sit in dharna, not to create any trouble on the floor. For that, streets are still available. Only few weeks in a year, Parliament is in session. For demonstrations, you can choose other places. But for God’s sake, do your job. You are meant to transact business. You are meant to devote your time for exercising the authority of members, particularly Lok Sabha members over money and finance,” he said.

Clearly anguished by the manner in which the winter session of Parliament has been stalled due to disruptions, the President said: “Disruption