 "Before GST roll-out, old cases in fast lane")
There could a short winter session of Parliament just after Diwali to ratify some of the changes in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Act. The government has begun to reach out to political parties for agreement to convene the session at an early date.
These are among the large number of measures the government is putting in place to get the GST in place by April 2017.
The early convening of Parliament will also provide a gap of two months before the next session of Parliament is convened in January to place the Budget.
This is one of the decisions set to be ratified by the first sets of meeting of the GST Council, which are expected to continue till September 29. The timing leaves Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley with space to participate in the deliberations before he flies abroad for the International Monetary Fund-World Bank meetings. The other measures likely to dominate the agenda of the Council, which includes Jaitley as chairman and the state finance ministers as members, are that there should be a joint secretary level officer of the state government on a permanent posting at their resident commissioners’ office in Delhi. “While smaller states could ask their resident commissioner to double up in the role, larger states need to put a dedicated officer who will work with the state minister during the periodic GST Council meetings,” an official connected with the developments said. The Council, which will now be a permanent body, will have a secretariat of 18 officers drawn from the department of revenue in the Finance Ministry and officers from the Central Board of Excise and Customs.
However, the meeting is not expected to finalise the rates of tax for the GST architecture, this time. “Nothing has been put on paper as drafts for a decision on the rates to take place,” the official said. While there is a convergence of views that there should not be more than three rates, it is the Council which will take a call when to get down to that aspect of the discussion.
This has become necessary said an official as the model central GST Bill is yet to be finalised. The actual rates will be included in the Bill. The Finance Ministry has already set up different task forces to work on various aspects of the Bill but the volume of work is enormous. “We have received over 6,000 suggestions covering all aspects of the Bill. It does not matter how many of those are accepted. The process of examination of all of them has to be done,” the official said.
