Nirmala Sitharaman, the Union Finance Minister, stated on Monday that if the GST Council makes a decision, gasoline and diesel could be included in the GST.
She was in Jaipur for the post-budget news conference, when she gave in-depth responses to queries about the cost of gasoline and diesel, inflation, and rising repo rates, among other topics.
In response to a question on include gasoline and diesel in the scope of the GST, she responded, “Petrol and diesel can be included in the GST if the GST council, which is run by the finance ministers of all states and is not under the control of any one government, takes the call.
“By stating that we will include it as an item under GST, the Center administration has made its intentions obvious. The GST Council should now decide whether to allow a “open charcha.”
The finance minister responded to the Congress’ claims of a vindictive strategy by saying, “Investigative agencies like ED, CBI, and others do a huge big homework for quite some time and when they have necessary prime facie material in their hands, after having sent a number of questionnaires and getting partial complete, or no reply, they go. You can’t just do it out of the blue with instinct.
It’s odd that a party’s former presidents are all free on bond after being charged with corruption or money laundering. They also mention vengeful politics.
Each agency that travelled there brought physical items, some of which were photographed by the media. They should explain to public and their own plenary why their people are out on bail by the court rather than condemning them of being vengeful.
“The Congress party should not speak at all about corruption, then bring in the issue of vengeance,” she remarked. It is regrettable that, one after another, every Congress administration has lost power over corruption-related matters, she remarked.
