Congress Sowed GST Seed, Now Doing About Turn: TRS

Hitting back at persistent criticism that the TRS was toeing the NDA line out of fear, TRS leader V Srinivas Goud today lashed out at the Congress for opposing the GST reform and skipping the GST launch program in Parliament on June 30.

Addressing the media at the TRS Legislature Party office on Saturday, Goud said that it was the Congress that had sown the seed for the GST reform. The then Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had worked on the GST, and had now even attended its launch as President. But the party was now opposing GST for political reasons.

This was nothing but double standards, he said. The Congress leaders should have attended the historic GST launch, he said, and added that it was the duty of all the states to implement GST.

Goud accused the Opposition of making a hue and cry on the uniform tax regime across the nation just for political mileage. The TRS government supported GST keeping in view the state's financial conditions, he said. Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao was working for the welfare of the people, and politics was not important to him, he claimed. The Congress and the Telugu Desam Party were envious of the development in the state under the TRS regime and were therefore resorting to making baseless allegations, he said.

The state government would still fight the Centre if the GST implementation caused it a heavy loss, Goud said. For example, KCR was asking the Centre to relax the GST on handlooms, granite, agriculture tools and others, he pointed out.

Referring to the Congress' Presidential candidate, Goud asked the Congress leaders why they had failed to find a dalit leader for the top post earlier.