Srinagar
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday said that Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti rooted for people’s welfare and ignored separatists’ voice to adopt Goods and Services Tax (GST) in the state assembly.
Jaitley said, “Separatists ran a propaganda that GST should not be implemented in J&K otherwise there will be financial integration of the state with India.”
The state finance minister was part of all the negotiations at the GST Council that decided on the tax rate and rules for its implementation and the state even hosted a meeting of the GST Council that decided on tax rates for about 1,200 goods.
The Centre had to then emphasize to the state that its people will lose out as they will pay tax twice over instead of just one GST, making goods costlier to them, he said.
“I wrote to Mehbooba Mufti saying that goods will become costlier (if you don’t implement GST). So, you have to choose the path of either going with the separatists or thinking about the welfare of the people of the state,” Jaitley said, addressing an event as thanksgiving for successfully implementing GST.
Jammu and Kashmir was the only state that had not approved a legislation to implement the GST even after the new indirect tax regime was rolled out on July 1.
The J&K assembly adopted the resolution to implement the new tax regime in the state on Wednesday.
