Congress raises apprehension over GST implementation, says it won't be easy

Raising apprehension over implementation of GST in the country, the Congress on Saturday said that it is not going to be easy and things would worsen moving forward as the way things are being done to introduce the ‘one nation, one tax’ regime.

“GST implementation is not going to be easy, it is going to present a lot of practical problems and the way things are being done would make things worse,” Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh said.

The Congress has been demanding that the GST not be implemented in haste and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram has suggested that October 1 is the right time for the tax reform legislation to be implemented in stead of the current deadline of July 1.

Ramesh also said that an atmosphere of fear prevails in the country and all those people who once criticised the previous government today stand silenced.

“There is an enormous atmosphere of fear in this country.  People are not speaking openly now as much as they used to speak three years ago.

“All the great champions who were criticising the government of the day four years ago have been silenced because of the atmosphere of fear,” he said.

The Congress leader said the government was making false promises and people will soon understand this.

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“It will take time for the false claims made by the government in totality,” he said.

On the question relating to electricity policy, Ramesh said that during the UPA tenure, a huge capacity has been created but this government is not utilising the capacity created despite there being power shortage across the country.

“This is the great irony, you need power, there is power shortage, you have the capacity and yet your plant load factor is mere 60 per cent, the lowest in last 15 years. How does Mr Piyush Goyal explain this? That’s the reality,” he said.