Excelsior Correspondent
NEW DELHI, June 30: Going beyond the realms of economic reform, GST midnight rollout heralds the dawn of cooperative federalism.
This is how Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh summed up his thoughts about the midnight event tonight while addressing an interactive programme of Healthcare Leaders’ and replying to a series of media queries here today.
Dr Jitendra Singh said, the midnight of June 30 and July 1 will go down in the history of India as a reform which was initially envisaged with the prime objective of changing India’s fortunes but eventually ended up in changing the entire work culture in governance and the behavior pattern in society. He said, the GST will also be remembered as the independent India’s most meticulously and most diligently worked out reform, for which the Finance Minister of India Arun Jaitley spent hundreds of hours finalising details and presided over as many as 18 long brainstorming meetings of the GST Council.
In the course of developing the GST draft, Dr Jitendra Singh said, many of us may not have fully realized that we were also developing a new kind of work culture in the government. Every decision in the GST Council, he pointed out, was taken with absolute unanimity with 3/4th majority, in which 2/3rd representation was from the States. In other words, he said, this is for the first time that a major decision in the Government has been taken with the spirit of absolute federalism with full cooperation of all the States and Union Territories of the Union.
Responding to a query about the decision of the Congress and some other political parties to boycott the midnight event, Dr Jitendra Singh said, we do not wish to rake up any controversy at this moment, but we hope that good sense will prevail and all the political parties would join the 125 crore people of this country in celebrating the arrival of GST. He said, technically speaking, since the GST Council was represented by representatives / Finance Ministers of every State and since the Bill was passed in the Parliament with 2/3rd majority with support from all the parties, hence there can be no logical reason, per se, to oppose it, and if at all it is opposed, then the motivation for this is obviously based on certain extraneous considerations or interests.
Dr Jitendra Singh recalled that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made it a point to ensure that none of his predecessors or the preceding governments were denied the credit of having worked on GST for over last one decade and it was in this spirit that invitations were extended to former Prime Ministers Dr Manmohan Singh and H.D. Deve Gowda to share the dais with the Prime Minister during the midnight launch. Therefore it was unfortunate, he said, if these parties fail to respond in the same spirit.
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