GST Council: Himachal seeks compensating on analogy of 'Kyoto Protocol'

Jaisalmer, Dec 21 (IANS) The 55th meeting of the GST Council was held under the chairmanship of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman with Himachal Pradesh minister Rajesh Dharmani seeking compensating for the state on the analogy of the 'Kyoto Protocol' that provides for compensating low-carbon emission countries. 

He also argued in favour of factoring in low population density.

Technical Education Minister Dharmani took up the issue of the GST compensation and urged to introduce some arrangements so that hilly states like Himachal could be compensated for loss of revenue due to GST implementation.

He also took up the issue of Rs 200 crore demand notices issued by CGST authorities to toll lessees of Himachal Pradesh.

Dharmani emphasised that the Central GST department's notices need to be annulled in view of the law position and requested to further clarify the issue.

The council deliberated extensively on easing of the tax burden in the insurance sector. Dharmani advocated in favour of exempting individual health and term insurance policies especially for women, children and senior citizens.

He also argued in favour of exempting GST on research and development for initial 10-15 years, including for the public as well as private entrepreneur.

The recommendations made by the council in this meeting are expected to result in easing the compliance burden of businesses and benefit large sections of consumers.

Earlier, in the pre-Budget meeting held on Friday here, Dharmani also made a strong case for establishing 'Adaptation Fund' for creating disaster-resilient infrastructure across the state.

He urged the Finance Minister to provide at least 50 per cent central share to acquire land for expansion of the Kangra airport and ongoing railway projects i.e. Bhanupalli-Bilaspur and Chandigarh-Baddi.

He also urged these projects should be purely implemented by the Central government in place of joint ventures and Himachal Pradesh being a hilly state and having an International border with China should be exempted from paying its share.

In the pre-budget meeting, the minister also advocated for continuing Special Central Assistance (SCA) and enhancing RDG grants and Central Road Infrastructural Fund (CRIF) which has been decreased from Rs 11,140 crore in 2020-21 to Rs 3,256 crore in 2025-26.

Also, he requested the Union Finance Minister to include ropeways under the PMGSY scheme and also provide the 10 per cent state share and five years maintenance cost of PMGSY works and emphasized on establishing Skill University in the state with multi-disciplinary institutions of technical, vocational education and research with special focus on geometrics engineering, geo-sciences, environment engineering, disaster-related studies, etc.

--IANS

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