Thank you very much, Deputy Speaker.  I see the Minister is no longer present here but I wanted to concur with him on his introductory remarks.  His MoS is here; good to see him.  It is because, certainly this issue of the GST, in principle, is one that not only does the Congress Party support but had initiated it, as I said, in principle.  I used to tell my European friends that you are 29 sovereign countries and one common market; we are one sovereign country with 29 different uncommon markets.  So, it is very good that we have created this in principle.  Our problem, however, is with the way in which this Government has implemented it.  This is why, I join my colleague, Shri Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury in saying, we disapprove of this Bill. 

          Let me stress that the Jammu and Kashmir Legislature has passed the GST when the Opposition was not present in the Assembly.  This happened amid debates about the nature of the impact of GST on Jammu and Kashmir’s relations with the Centre which, as you all know, are governed by Article 370, as the Minister explained.  The Opposition claimed that this was a violation of Jammu and Kashmir Constitution and of Article 370 because it eroded the State’s special status in terms of its own financial autonomy and its legislative powers which are reserved for the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly.  That is why, the Bill that we passed here says, ‘except in the State of Jammu and Kashmir’ throughout. 

          We all know the power of taxation is integral to the functioning of any Government.  Any changes made to such power will impact the functioning of a State.  The GST Act has a very serious further impact.  In that, it alters the relationship between the State of Jammu and Kashmir and the Centre.  By impinging upon the power of the State to impose taxes, you are violating the fundamental power of that Government.  Now, the Jammu and Kashmir State derives its power of taxation from the Constitution of J&K while the Centre derives the same power from article 246 of our Constitution. This is a very important distinction that the Minister, despite being a lawyer, did not mention.  By extending GST to Jammu and Kashmir, the Centre gains effective control of the taxation in the State. That was, of course, something reserved by the Constitution to the State Government.  The powers of the GST Council are far reaching.  Jammu and Kashmir has not guaranteed any protection that would be commensurate with its special status. That is why, we saw widespread protests in the State Mr. Deputy Speaker.

          The umbrella body for trade, commerce and industry and the Jammu and Kashmir Coordination Committee opposed the Bill for this reason.  A State like Jammu and Kashmir must be approached with sensitivity.  We have not seen much sensitivity in this Government’s handling of Kashmir, the Centre’s indifference to the Opposition, the Opposition’s boycott, and the criticism of the trade body, the coordination body there.  All of them were ignored and it could signal future problems that the Treasury Benches should be paying attention to.  The Chief Minister’s act of seeking a special exemption for certain goods and services after the Bill was passed is a very peculiar thing.  It should have been done certainly before the Bill was passed.  In fact the Opposition’s confidence might have been built if the Government itself was capable of recognising that some exemptions were required.  Now, the State Government passes the Bill and then asks for exemptions. If the State Government actually intended to secure these benefits of exemptions for the State, should it not have deliberated upon these issues before the Bill was passed?  Should it not have asked for amendment in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly? These are important questions Mr. Deputy Speaker that this Government has not addressed in the Minister’s opening remarks.  The State has been dealing with conflicts for a long time and we must absolutely not subject to any measures that could worsen its stability.

GST has been moved by the Government in extreme haste. Do you know in Malaysia, when they introduced GST, they announced it and they gave the public and shopkeepers and so on one year before it has come into force?  In India, a much larger country than Malaysia did not get one year, we got only two weeks.  This is what this Government has done in its haste.  The GST Network which is the IT backbone of the GST system is in a shambles.  When GST registrations began in June, there was a massive confusion and businesses did not quite know what to do. They tried to begin the process of migrating to the new system.  They met technical glitches in the process. The OTPs were not working.  The website crashed multiple times.  And the responses were delayed as a result by the Government.  Stories of systems failures have been frequent.  In fact, I think we all know even about our own tax returns and we have been five days more because the systems are failing.  How they imposed the GST Network on the country with this level of preparedness?  It goes on to increase the insecurity of our economy that many people have already felt when we had the dramatic demonetization and they have affected so many people abruptly and that unsettled the economy. 

          Now, the Centre had promised to the nation a simplified system of taxation - a Good and Simple Tax.  The Prime Minister said GST - Good and Simple Tax with the motto of one nation, one tax.  But the GST is not one nation, one tax.  It consists of three layers – CGST, IGST and SGST and has six slabs of taxation – 0 per cent, 3 per cent for gold, 5 per cent, 12 per cent, 18 per cent, 28 per cent and 40 per cent.  India is the only GST system in the whole world to have so many slabs. So, in stead of one nation, one tax, we have one nation, three taxes and six slabs.  That is not a slogan that will trip so comfortably off the tongue of our Government propagandist.  Let me say that it also has created massive confusion.  You may remember that on the 1^st July when it came into force, many shops simply down their shutters.  They even did not open for business.  They did not know how to cope with what to do with the GST that had come in. In fact this GST taxes different variations of the same product different. 

          Mr. Deputy Speaker, for example, take the case of milk.  We all need milk.  You actually have four different rates for milk products. If we take flower, generic flower is not taxed.  You put a brand on a packet, immediately five per cent will be taxed.  It is extraordinary. In fact, pastries, sweet biscuits and cakes are taxed at six per cent. But if it has a chocolate covering, suddenly it comes to 12 per cent. I am very curious about what the Minister has against chocolates. But just merely putting an icing of chocolate on the cake, you have put an extra tax. This is frankly, Mr. Deputy Speaker, irresponsibly complicated. It is far more complicated than it needs to be. And, on top of that these tax slabs are only announced just as the tax was being rolled out, which left a little or no time for a small trader to prepare himself for the changes that will now be necessary in the accounting and filing of returns.

          You know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that one simple business operating in only one State will now have to file 37 tax filings. If you have offices in three States, you have to file 111 tax forms. What is going on in this country? This is the Minister who told us that he was opposed to tax terrorism, instead what we are seeing is tax form terrorism. We are seeing something which obviously is going to cause a whole amount of problems, increasing works for everybody involved in business.

You know, we have been complaining for some time that this Government is not creating jobs. It seems that through the GST, they are creating jobs only for Accountants and tax experts. This is what they have done and created because now the mom-and-pop store, ?????? ????????   has to find a Chartered Accountant to be able to fill his GST forms.

I do want to say, Mr. Deputy Speaker that there is a particular problem when it relates to Jammu and Kashmir. It is a very sensitive State. It has been beset by terrorism and by violence. It has very many security issues. Its principle revenue generation is tourism which has been affected by terrorism. We need to do everything we can as a Parliament to protect the fragile economy of Jammu and Kashmir. We have to make sure that this economy undermined by terror is not undermined by the Finance Ministry’s terrorism. We must say their horticulture, handicraft and tourism sectors require help. The 28 per cent GST now is going to affect all of the tourism in Jammu and Kashmir. The adventure camp operators and house boat owners have already protested. If this is not rolled back, it is likely to make Kashmir uncompetitive in tourism. And, indeed it is already making parts of India. My State, Kerala has become uncompetitive in tourism because the tax rate is driving up the cost beyond any of our neighbouring States.

Frankly, tourists are looking at these numbers and saying, let us go to Sri Lanka. The air ticket may cost a little more but the facilities are better and the tax is lower. Kashmir cannot afford that kind of crisis today when we have a serious problem in Jammu and Kashmir.

And, on top of that, a country like Singapore has demonstrated that with one flat rate of seven per cent they are able to tax all goods equally. India--the Congress Party had argued--should have a cap of 18 per cent. They were not able to agree to a cap and now we are seeing the consequences of this. An economy that loses a large chunk of its productivity to constant turmoil in Kashmir is now going to be burdened by the Centre’s over-enthusiastic experiments.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, please give two minutes. I am the lead speaker from my Party on this.

I want to stress that it is undoubtedly a relief that the farrago of Central taxes, State sales taxes, octroi and so on, has been abolished and replaced by the GST. But this much of complexity means it is likely to lead to evasion, to arbitrage and even to bribery of tax officials. It is likely to lead ransacking behaviour from bureaucrats, and as the tax business is well known and I fear it is going to get worse.

There are other problems. Right now I have been approached by people building a highway in my State, saying that for the highway construction, they had all bid for their tenders on the basis of the four or five per cent VAT that was applied. There was no service tax on highway construction. Suddenly, the GST has been applied at the rate of 12 per cent. Our highway construction is going to come to a halt. Absolutely, it applies to all road constructions. In fact, today I was having a meeting on our border infrastructure. We are really worried. They are now having to delay the tenders till July 1^st so that the GST can be added to the cost of roads. We should not be undermining a place like Jammu and Kashmir in this irresponsible way.

 I do want to stress finally that there is also a great threat of litigation coming up, a flood of litigation about which tax brackets, which companies fall into and how their goods should be categorised. Even before the GST was rolled out, we all know the Indian judicial system was choked by indirect tax cases. Just tax appeals had tied down something like Rs.1.4 lakh crore in revenue.On top of that, a judicial system that is so backlogged, 24 million cases pending as we have heard during the Question Hour, more tax related legal suits are resulting in losing the country’s means. So, let me stress, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, I can see you are about to reach for the bell, I will just take only one minute. The BJP Government has raised the cost of many goods for GST. I want to remind them of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy’s warning that if the GST amounted as they calculated to as much as 27 per cent to prevent revenue loss, then far from reviving the economy such a way will cripple it. This is the risk we are facing in this country.

          The current Government version of GST, I am sorry, would have a negative effect on GDP instead of a positive one and it would actually fulfil the warning of the National Institute of Public Policy.

          Let me repeat coming back to Jammu & Kashmir, that the State Government passes the State law and when it meets stiff opposition, voice for protest, boycott of the assembly by the Opposition on this issue, the Parliament today must contemplate the impact of GST on the Centre’s relation with J&K before we make the major mistake of passing this Bill without adequate consultation with the stakeholders. For this reason, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, the Congress Party cannot support this Bill.

          Thank you.