India needs campaign for better opposition, their criticism of GST ill-informed: Sitharaman

New Delhi: India deserves a better opposition and better opposition leaders, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday, as she slammed their criticism of the Modi government on the GST reforms as "ill-informed" and untouched by facts leading up to the implementation of the unified indirect tax regime in 2017.

In an interview, she was unsparing in her takedown of the Congress for blaming the BJP-led NDA government for keeping four tax slabs when the GST was introduced and claiming vindication over the latest move to rationalise the structure by keeping only two slabs. It was not the BJP's decision nor the case that then-Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was deciding upon different tax slabs or what should be the GST rate for a particular item, Sitharaman said, adding Congress ministers, too, were part of it. "Are they (opposition) not aware of it?" Explaining the evolution of four GST rates in which opposition-ruled states played a crucial role as well in the run-up to its implementation in July 2017, Sitharaman said the country needs a campaign for a better Opposition and better opposition leaders on the lines of public movement against issues like tree-cutting. In a feisty response, she said she will have no qualm in tendering an apology if opposition leaders deal in facts and prove her wrong. "I have no ego. I will even apologise to people. But what they (opposition) are saying is nonsense." "The Congress has now stirred into action. If you do not understand the issue, then the least you can do is keep quiet," she said, reminding the principal opposition party that it was an Empowered Committee of finance ministers from states that decided on keeping four slabs in the Goods and Services Tax before it was rolled out.

It was this Committee that formulated what was to be implemented in the GST from 2017, she said. In deliberations stretching for years, including under the Congress-led UPA government, Left leader and then-West Bengal Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta was influential in driving consultations as head of the Empowered Committee besides finance ministers from other opposition-ruled states at different points of time, she noted. She said the Empowered Group had evaluated different levels of taxes on an item in different states, thrashed out an average and then agreed to keep that product in one of the four GST slabs nearest to the average. In her seventh year as Finance Minister, spearheading some of the government's major reforms aimed at giving relief to consumers, including the increase in income tax exemption to Rs 12 lakh in her last budget, and helping the industry, Sitharaman has often been at the receiving end of the Opposition's flak over economic issues. She launched a vigorous counterattack over its criticism of the government on the GST. "India deserves a better opposition. I strongly believe in it. India needs better opposition leaders. Such ill-informed commentary will do no good. These leaders are misleading the public and not serving the country. In fact, they are harming it," she said. Sitharaman was dismissive of Congress leader Jairam Ramesh's contention that Prime Minister Narendra Modi undermined the GST Council, a constitutional body that takes all decisions related to the indirect tax regime, with his announcement in his Independence Day speech of the upcoming rationalisation.

Modi gave a message to the country about reforms as the country's prime minister, she said and asked, "What is wrong in this?" Asked if the reforming drive aimed at giving relief to people will continue as the government has already come out with measures like raising Income Tax exemption and GST rate rationalisation in over a year of its third term, she said Modi has always been focussed on pro-people reforms. Even during the Covid, the government carried on with the exercise and it will continue to do so, she asserted. The GST Council had on September 2 approved limiting tax slabs to 5 per cent and 18 per cent and removing two other slabs of 12 per cent and 28 per cent, effective from September 22, the first day of Navaratri. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge had said his party had been demanding simplification of the GST for several years and blamed the Modi government for burdening people with high tax rates for long. The party also criticised the decision as GST 1.5, claiming the wait for the GST 2.0 continues.