GST Council becoming authoritarian and majoritarian: Bengal FM Amit Mitra

After registering dissent over the GST Council decisions on Covid-related materials, West Bengal Finance Minister, Amit Mitra,on Monday said that the Council was moving away from a consensus-based approach and slipping into an authoritarian and majoritarian approach.

Citing several examples of a “dramatic shift”, Mitra said that the GST Council was the only federalist institution, but in the last few years, an omnipotent, authoritarian and majoritarian approach was creeping into the GST Council.

One of the instances that Mitra pointed out related to borrowing to meet compensation shortfall of states. “We had said that the Centre should borrow from its