Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha has said that meeting April 1 deadline for GST rollout seems to be challenging, amid ongoing political turbulence.
Stating the reason Sinha said “legislative side is complicated because you need two-third majority in the Rajya Sabha, you need 50 per cent of states to pass it and then we have to get GST Bill to be passed. Hence, there is lot of heavy lifting to be done on legislative side which makes this challenging in terms of April 1, 2016”. Sinha further added “We will keep pushing as far as GST is concerned. It will happen sooner rather than later.”
Further he stated that if indeed the legislation gets passed across the Centre and states then there is no reason why the government cannot implement in the year at any point. He also said that the present regime is pro-poor and pro-market.
The Constitutional Amendment Bill to roll out GST is stuck in the Rajya Sabha due to stiff opposition by the Congress party and might be delayed further because of the tough stance taken by the main opposition party over the National Herald case issue.