Sudarsan Maharana
post news network
Bhubaneswar, Sept 1: While the state assembly unanimously passed the Constitution Amendment Bill on Goods and Services Tax (GST), 2016, the special session Thursday was not without squabbles and heated arguments between the treasury and opposition benches.
As soon as Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik tabled the statutory resolution on GST in the house, Leader of Opposition (LoP) Narasingha Mishra (Congress) claimed that by calling the one-day proceedings a special session “the house is violating Article 174 of the constitution which doesn’t speak of any special session of the house”.
“Session is session. We can’t distinguish. Any business can be taken up during a session,” Mishra started on a fiery note.
However, speaker Niranjan Pujari said that conventions are also considered as law. Though rules do not provide for any special session, the Assembly had similar sittings several times including in November 1997 and March 2009 which were termed special sessions.
During the GST debate, Mishra, who said that his party would support the resolution in the larger interest of the state, targeted the ruling party for not taking the opposition into confidence on the bill.
Stating that Biju Janata Dal (BJD) leaders lack understanding on the 122nd constitutional amendment bill, the LoP called the ruling party in the state a ‘confused lot’ when it comes to GST.
“Out of the four amendments Congress had proposed in Parliament, ‘tax capping’ – in which we had demanded tax rates not exceeding 18 per cent – was not accepted,” Mishra said. “However, two BJD Rajya Sabha MPs expressed diametrically opposite views to each other,” he added.
“While one BJD MP said that his party doesn’t support tax capping, another expressed his support so that no government would be able to take advantage of it,” Mishra said without naming them.
Tax capping in GST is necessary as states like Orissa where nearly 57 per cent people spent less than `20 per day would otherwise end up paying heavy taxes for goods, he argued while criticising the ruling party for “not protecting the interest of the poor and busy playing petty politics”.
BJP legislature party chief KV Singh Deo and several opposition MLAs including Congress’ Prafulla Majhi and Taraprasad Bahinipati also criticised the ruling party for its ‘double standards’.
However, BJD MLAs Amar Prasad Satpathy, Bed Prakash Agrawal and Ranendra Pratap Swain took on the opposition, especially the LoP for not raising the issue of CST loss to the state due to GST.