Srinagar: Alleging that the fiscal autonomy and special position of the state has been grossly eroded by implementing of Goods and Services Tax (GST), National Conference (NC) today said that ‘the Presidential Order on the tax regime was a ploy to mislead the people of Jammu and Kashmir’.
The NC said that by virtue of the Presidential Order, the Centre has been given vast powers to make laws on taxation in the State which hitherto was the sole domain of J&K Legislature.
“The Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) has been fully extended to the State as envisaged in the newly added Article 246A of the Constitution of India. As such, Article 370 of the Constitution of India and Section 5 of the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir have been diluted and virtually reduced to husks,” senior NC leader and former finance minister Abdul Rahim Rather told reporters during a press conference here today.
In addition to this, he said Article 279A has also been applied to the State. “Needless to mention, the GST Council has sweeping powers as envisaged in Article 279A which include the powers to make recommendations to the Union and the States regarding the goods and services that may be subjected to, or exempted from, the Goods and Services Tax; to fix rates including floor rates with bands of Goods and Services Tax; to set the threshold limit of turnover below which goods and services may be exempted from the Goods and Services Tax; to prepare model Goods and Services Tax Laws and power to make recommendation on any other matter relating to the Goods and Services Tax as the Council may decide,” he said.
He said through this Presidential Order, the GST Council has retained these sweeping powers in respect of Jammu and Kashmir also – as is the case with other States of the Country.
“The PDP is giving much hype to the provision in the Presidential Order which mentions that the powers of the State of Jammu and Kashmir as per Section 5 of the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir shall remain intact. While the Presidential Order has robbed Section 5 of the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir of its content and substance viz-a-viz the exclusive domain of the State Legislature to tax goods and services within the State, a mere rhetorical certification of its continuance is a glaring contradiction and is aimed at fooling the people of the State,” he alleged.
Mr Rather said that the opponents of Fiscal Autonomy and Special Position, available to the State of Jammu and Kashmir under the Constitution of India, have been celebrating since the vague, ambiguous and obnoxious resolution was passed in the J&K Legislature.
“Although the rules of procedure and conduct of business in the J&K Legislature specifically restrain the Speaker from allowing any resolution in the Assembly which is vague and ambiguous, yet the Speaker chose to allow it in total disregard of the parliamentary rules and conventions,” he said.
He said State BJP President Sat Sharma has publicly expressed his party’s happiness over their sense of ideological victory by saying the extension of GST regime to the State was a ‘beginning of the process of complete integration of Jammu and Kashmir into the Union of India’, as widely reported by the media.
“This has exposed the hollow claims of the ruling PDP-BJP dispensation that the extension of GST regime to J&K State was purely a taxation matter and had nothing to do with the politics and the identity of the State,” he further alleged.
Mr Rather said it had been a consistent stand of Jammu and Kashmir NC that extension of GST to J&K at the cost of the State’s Fiscal Autonomy and Special Status would not be acceptable – as was made abundantly clear by the party’s representatives in every single All Party and Consultative Group’s meetings held on this issue.
Responding to a question raised that the Financial Integration of the State with the Union had taken place long back in the year 1956, as claimed by the State Finance Minister Dr Haseeb Drabu, Mr Rather said if that was the case then there would have been no need to extend Article 246A and Article 279A of the Constitution of India to the State of Jammu and Kashmir through the recently issued Presidential Order.
“It is very unfortunate that the State’s Chief Minister as also her Finance Minister are deliberately and intentionally concealing the material facts about the GST and its adverse impact on the State’s Special Position. Our future generations will not forgive them for this deceitful and questionable collaboration in facilitating the erosion of J&K’s Autonomy,” Mr Rather alleged.
