Mamata Banerjee to PM on GST dues

News Desk: The clash between West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi over GST dues continues. Three or four days back Finance Minister of Central Government Nirmala Sitharaman declared that Center cannot give the GST dues of the States and the Center faced opposition from several States for this act.

Not only Mamata Banerjee, but Chief Minister of Kerala (Pinarayi Vijayan), Delhi (Arvind Kejriwal), Tamil Nadu (Edappadi K Palaniswami), Telengana (K Chandrasekhar Rao) and Chhatisgarh (Bhupesh Baghel) wrote to PM Narendra Modi regarding the GST dues. Even finance minister of West Bengal Amit Mitra slammed Nirmala Sitharaman by saying “It’s not act of god, but act of fraud”.

Mamata Banerjee said “The Center is violating the very premise of federalism”.

In her letter, Banerjee also said that despite assurances, states were being thrust with two “unilateral options, both of which require the States to borrow lacks and crores of rupees, when many of them are unable to pay salaries to their employees”.

“Instead of helping the states, is it proper for the Centre to stop assistance to the states and thrust more financial burden on them?” she questioned.

“This is a travesty and an abrogation of fundamental basis on which states gave up 70 per cent of their taxing powers, including the entire VAT regime, to usher in GST regime,” Banerjee said.

“The only condition for giving up all of these powers was the promise of full compensation of shortfall in GST collection for 5 years, on an agreed formula,” she added.

Mamata Banerjee sought to remind PM Modi that when he was the chief minister of Gujarat, he had opposed the implementation of GST on various grounds.

“Late Shri Arun Jaitley also unambiguously and publicly stated, in December 2013, that the sole reason why BJP was opposing the GST implementation is because BJP did not trust the then Government of India in honouring compensation of GST, losses to the states!” Banerjee said.

She suggested that it would be better if the Government of India borrows the money to compensate the GST compensation shortfall to states.

“I am sure that the states will reciprocate in supporting a resolution that cess collection continues beyond the 5 years till the entire debt of the Centre is totally liquidated, along with the entire interest payment cost,” she wrote.

Earlier, Mamata Banerjee had slammed the Centre after states were given two options to make up for GST Compensation cess dues.

“Where do we get the money? We are giving our tax income to the central government. Now, they are not releasing it back to us…My state was due to receive Rs 4100 crore in GST refund in May-June, but we are yet to receive it. How do we run the government?” Mamata Banerjee said.