Mamata Banerjee's government to send Arun Jaitley a letter on 'Unfinished GST Agendas

KOLKATA: Mamata Banerjee's government will send a letter to the Union finance minister Arun Jaitley protesting against the `unfinished agendas' and `lack of preparedness' of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) that will be effective from July 1. Her government had already sent a seven-page letter to Jaitley during the recently held GST Council meeting in Srinagar, The letter is likely to reach Jaitley couple of days before the next council meeting on June 11.In the last letter, Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra had sent rate-recommendations for 17 items and 15 services, and in another letter, he had requested the FM to defer the rollout of GST to September. Mitra had already demanded a White Paper from the Centre on the preparedness of the industries in this regard too.

There's considerable confusion in Bengal regarding the rollout of GST, with Banerjee digging her heels in for a fight with the NDA government led by Narendra Modi.While Banerjee had said that she won't accept the GST in its current form, the bureaucrats are struggling with various aspects of the new tax structure, including the repercussions of not implementing it.

Mitra had tried to buy some time by arguing to defer its implementa tion by two months, said sources familiar with the outcome of the June 3 meeting. While contacted, Mitra said, “West Bengal has remained vigilant about the tax structure and has always approached the Centre based on four pro-people principles -the tax should impact common people positively , the overall revenue of the state should not be weakened, small and medium industries need to be ready to usher in the new tax regime, and large industries that depend on at least three layers of MSMES need to have a proper integration in this regard.“