Amit Mitra urges Fin min to call GST Council meet, says wasn't held for past 4 months

Kolkata: In a letter to Union Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's principal advisor Amit Mitra urged the Union minister to call a meeting of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council.

Mitra in his letter stated that the Council had not called for such a meeting for the last four months and that the procedures of GST Council mention that the meeting should be held at least once in three months.

The Principal chief advisor referred to Rule 6 of the Procedure & Conduct of Business Regulations of the GST Council in pursuance of Article 279A (8) of the Constitution, which states that the GST Council meeting will be held at least once in every quarter of a financial year. "Yet, in utter violation of this solemn provision, you have not called a single meeting of the Council (physical or virtual) over the last four and a half months," Mitra's letter read.

As reported, he further urged the Union Finance minister to bring "finality, through consensus", on the matters that are pending with two Groups of Ministers (GOMs) for over a year now and to recognise the work being done by all the States to increase GST collection.

The former Finance minister of West Bengal claimed that the outcome of two GOMs, formed on September 24, 2021 and May 24, 2021 still await finality, with only an interim report submitted by one of them.

"May I point out that in the federalist spirit, all States are doing stellar work in increasing GST collections which benefit your Central Government as much as it benefits the States. For example, the policy of zero tolerance for GST return default, by the West Bengal government, has led to a sharp rise in return filing and thereby, GST collections," he stated in his letter.

He said that the return filing in Bengal, which was close to 70 per cent in the previous year, has risen to 93 per cent during the months of April-October, 2022. The trend is likely to be similar in several other states as well.

"The States are also conducting scrutiny of returns copiously and have

taken anti-evasion drives consistently," he said.