Rahul Gandhi says he won't rest till 'Gabbar Singh Tax' is converted to GST with 18% cap

Asserting that the Centre’s decision to reduce the GST rates on a number of items was due to pressure from the Opposition , Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said he would not rest till the five-slab “Gabbar Singh Tax” was converted into the “Goods and Services Tax” with an 18 percent cap.

The Gandhi scion, who launched his poll campaign in north Gujarat after offering prayers at the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar, said that GST was in dire need of structural changes. “It is good that the Congress party and the people of this country pressurised BJP to bring down many items from 28 percent bracket to 18 percent. However, we are not happy and we shall not stop. India does not need five different taxes but one tax. GST needs structural change,” he said.

On Friday, the tax rates on over 200 items , ranging from chewing gum to chocolates to beauty products, wigs and wristwatches, were cut by the GST Council to provide relief to consumers and businesses in the backdrop of an economic slowdown.

He claimed in a rally in Himmatnagar that the current tax slabs were designed to benefit the rich. “The aim of GST was to break the backbone of small and medium businesses in India and to strengthen the backbones of a selected few rich industrialists,” Gandhi emphasised that India needed a unified tax and simple tax and if the BJP-led Central government did not manage to fix GST, then the Congress party will make sure it happens “when they come to power”.

Gandhi’s claim that the government was forced by the Congress to roll back the GST rates was criticised by the government with Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman asking, “Is the GST Council under them?”

The 47-year-old Amethi MP also slammed demonetisation, saying, “The government which tells people at 8 pm in the night that it is going to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes within four hours, does not know what is in the hearts of people.”  He made an analogy that the BJP government lived in a “house without doors or windows” and that only such a government “which doesn’t care about what’s going on outside and who don’t know what the people need” could implement the note ban. He also juxtaposed Congress party’s effort for MNREGA with Modi’s help to the Tata Nano project. “We gave Rs 35,000 crore for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Agency (MNREGA), but Modi gave Rs 35,000 crore to Tata Nano project,” Gandhi said.

The Congress leader also raked up the issue of a company of Jay Shah, the son of BJP president Amit Shah. He said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was silent about the company of Jay Shah, the turnover of which, as per a report by The Wire , rose from Rs 50,000 to Rs 80 crore in a few months after the BJP came to power at the Centre.

“Modi ji used to said he would be a chowkidar (watchman), but now people are asking whether he is a chowkidar or a bhagidar (collaborator),” he said in a rally at Khedbrahma, taking a jab at Modi’s statement that he does not want to behave like a prime minister but a ‘chowkidar’ of the country’s wealth. The Wire has alleged wrongdoings in the company owned by Jay Shah, a charge vehemently rejected by the latter and his father. Jay Shah has also filed a criminal defamation case against the news portal.

Gandhi also claimed that the Congress government in Himachal Pradesh, where polling took place on 9 November, had done a better work than the BJP regime in Gujarat, which goes to the polls next month. He claimed that development in Himachal Pradesh far exceeded the ‘Gujarat Model.’

“The Congress government in Himachal Pradesh opened four (new) medical colleges, but in Gujarat, no (new) medical college has come up,” Gandhi said. “The Himachal government did not close down a single school, but the Gujarat government shut down 13,000 government schools. Himachal gave 14 lakh houses to the poor (under a scheme), but in Gujarat, the number of houses given by the government was half of that. Gujarat also lags behind Himachal in education and generating jobs,” he said.

Meanwhile, BJP workers showed black flags to the Congress vice-president in Himmatnagar town of Sabarkantha district in north Gujarat. Rahul Gandhi also faced flak from Union Minister Smriti Irani, who said that Gandhi should give up the hope of winning the Gujarat Assembly polls and be worried about the fact that in the Uttar Pradesh elections last year, the Congress could not win a single seat out of his five Vidhan Sabha seat.

The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will go to the polls in two phases — on 9 and 14 December.

With inputs from PTI and IANS