Upper House nos. may have got Mitra GST role

KOLKATA: Amit Mitra, finance minister of West Bengal and the new chief of GST, will now have to take forward the unfinished agenda of his predecessor and rival, Asim Dasgupta, the former finance minister of the state.

But there’s more to Mitra’s appointment than meets the eye. Political observers say the Modi government has chosen the GST chief from a party which has a good representation in the Upper House, which reduces the chance of a conflict.

Interestingly, the same reason was attributed when Dasgupta was made the chief of the panel in 2000, said a senior CPM leader.

Even though economists put credibility and efficiency as the main reasons for choosing the chief of the panel, political observers differ.

An MIT grad, Dasgupta drafted the GST Bill during his decade-long – 2000-2011– tenure as the panel chief, which introduced VAT. He was tasked with drafting the GST in 2007, and in 2010 most of the work was done. But everything slowed down following Dagupta’s resignation in 2011.

Ironically, Dasgupta was defeated in the 2011 assembly elections by Mitra, the current GST chairman.

Dasgupta stepped down from the panel after the defeat and was successively followed by Sushil Modi, J&K finance minister Abdul Rahim Rather and Kerala FM KM Mani. Now, it is up to Mitra to ensure smooth passage for the Bill that’s stuck for way too long.

“During my five years in the empowered committee, I have seen there’s kind of consensus among all parties and states on the desirability of a single tax such as GST,” Mitra told ET.