From CK Nayak
NEWDELHI: Chief Minister Mukul Sangma on Wednesday took exception to Union Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley’s claim that all states barring Tamil Nadu have more or less agreed to GST in its present form and said that many other states including Meghalaya have expressed their serious reservations.
In a letter to Jaitley, the Chief Minister said, “Your statement in the media on near unanimity on GST is misleading. The concerns of the states during the discussions of the Empowered Committee have not been captured by you and thus not appropriately shared before the media either deliberately or otherwise giving a distorted version”.
Sangma said that the Sate Excise Minister had also raised concerns which have not been mentioned by Jaitley.
The GST is meant to institutionalize one uniform tax rate to be paid at a single point across India and the proposed GST in present form allows an additional levy tax of up to one percent on inter?state trade for two years or longer, Meghalaya has maintained.
Thus, a product will be priced differently in different states and the effect will keep getting magnified as 1% is added at each state and thus adversely affecting the far?flung states, Sangma said.
The proposed GST has not specified a cap rate while Meghalaya has argued for a cap rate of 18 percent, Sangma said.
The Centre’s voting rights in the GST Council (which is the crucial dispute redressal mechanism) should be limited to 25% from the current 33.3% proposed currently which was also raised by other states too, he said.