Jaitley-Rahul meeting on GST before Winter session

Dated 19th November, 2015

With the Winter Session of Parliament due to begin late next week, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday met Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, setting off a wave of speculation in Delhi’s political circles. Though Mr Jaitley is reportedly meeting senior political leaders to invite them for the wedding of his daughter next month, there was a buzz that he was also trying hard to enlist the Opposition parties’ support to get the Goods and Services Tax Bill passed by Parliament.

There was no word from the Congress on what was discussed at the meeting between Mr Jaitley and Mr Gandhi. The finance minister has of late repeatedly been saying that he would reach out to the Congress and Mr Gandhi to seek his help to clear the GST Bill. This has been billed as the most ambitious reform measure of the NDA government at the Centre.

While Trinamul Congress, JD(U), BJD and Samajwadi Party have openly supported the GST Bill, the Congress has stuck to the position that the bill in its current form is not acceptable to the party.

Sources in the Congress said Wednesday Mr Jaitley’s meeting with Mr Gandhi was welcome, but the Centre needed to speak to the leaders of the Congress in the two Houses of Parliament — Mallikarjun Kharge in the Lok Sabha and Ghulam Nabi Azad in the Rajya Sabha — on the issue of the GST Bill.

The government had earlier set the deadline of April 1, 2016 for the rollout of GST. But if the government fails to get parliamentary approval for the GST Bill in the Winter Session, the April 1 rollout is extremely doubtful, besides casting aspersions on the NDA government’s ability to execute big-bang reforms. As the Winter Session will be held in the backdrop of the BJP-led NDA’s drubbing in the Bihar Assembly polls and the nationwide campaign against intolerance, there are fears that the government would find the going tough in both Houses of Parliament.