New Delhi, Jan 9 (FN Agency) The Congress party on Thursday accused the Narendra Modi government of benefitting the industrialists by looting the people of the country through the “terror” of Goods and Services Tax (GST).Addressing a press conference here, Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil termed the GST a “terror” for the common man and said that the GST was meant to simplify the tax system, but the Modi government has made it complicated by implementing it in a hurry and the people are suffering in the slabs created on it. The Congress leader said, “During the UPA government, Dr Manmohan Singh had said that GST will be brought in to give relief to the people and not to loot them and it will be implemented in a systematic manner by simplifying the tax.
But the BJP government is doing just the opposite”. He said, “What is happening today is not development of the country but development of only some ‘select friends’ of Modi ji. They talk of Ram Rajya but they are implementing the Lanka model”. Gohil alleged that the BJP government is taxing the common man and that too not on income but on spendings. Adding that the GST collection of 2/3rd tax is contributed by the common man, while 10 percent billionaires and “friends of Modi” contribute to just three percent of GST”. “In the last 10 years, the gap between ‘haves and have-nots’ has increased. In 2019, the Modi government had slashed the corporate tax by Rs two lakh crore, and benefited his friends.
And when we talk of empowering woman of Delhi by announcing Rs 2,500, then they accuse us of distributing freebies,” Shaktisinh said.He said that the problem is that even the farmers are being cheated in this tax system and 28 percent GST is being charged on chemicals that the farmers use to protect their crops from insect and pests. It may be mentioned that, the Congress today held 12 press conferences in 12 major cities to expose, what it called “terror of GST”. The press conferences were addressed by Gourav Gogoi in Jorhat, Praveen Chakravarty in Vijayawada, Shaktisinh Gohil in Delhi, Mohan Kumarmangalam in Ahmedabad, Jaynarayan Vyas in Surat, Ajoy Kumar in Chandigarh, M Rajeev Gowda in Trivandrum, Sachin Pilot in Mumbai, TS Singh Deo in Bhopal, Pawan Khera in Jaipur, Supriya Shrinate in Lucknow and MM Pallam Raju in Kolkata.