Ranchi: Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging his intervention and direct the Union Finance Ministry to release the compensation dues of GST at the earliest.
The Chief Minister said that he was writing the letter after being informed that the Government of India has expressed it inability to give the compensation for the loss of GST revenue suffered by Jharkhand in the financial year 2020-21. He said that the state has so far registered a loss of nearly Rs 2500 crore in the current fiscal but no compensation has been released by the government of India.
He said that in the GST council meeting held recently the Union finance minister instead of giving some firm commitment decided to thrust two unilateral and arbitrary options which require states to borrow crores of Rupees. He said that three years back no one would have imagined that Centre would take such a stance and this act of sovereign default to compensate states for the GST losses runs against the very spirit of cooperative federalism and is symptomatic of the withering trust between the centre and the state.
He recalled as to how in the Prime Minister’s address to the nation on July 1, 2017 GSTbwas portrayed as a great example of co-operative federalism that would herald inclusive growth to the nation. However he said that India as a nation can grown only when its constituent states also grow and become self reliant but reluctance of the Centre to fulfill its constitutional obligations related to GST compensation goes against the idea of interests of the state and spirit of Cooperative federalism.
Adding further he said that GST regime could be implemented only because in the larger interests of the nation the states decided to weaken the states own resources and forgo the constitutional power of taxation. He said that further the Centre had promised to compensate the states for the losses they would suffer for the next five years.
“But it has been just three years of GST journey and we find ourselves deserted. Reluctance and inability of the Government of India to give full compensation to the state is a betrayal of the commitment it made in the Union Parliament and also in all the Council meetings held so far,” he wrote.
He said that Jharkhand being a manufacturing, heavy industries based state with less consumption was bound to suffer losses in GST Regime even then Jharkhand State Assembly consented to its implementation, not only this Jharkhand contributes to compensation fund a cess of nearly Rs 5000 crore from the mineral sector alone and in return the state gets a paltry sum of nearly Rs 150 crore as monthly compensation and now the state was being asked to borrow at a time when it is hard pressed to fulfill salaries of government servant. He said that poor people of this backward state would like to know what wrong they committed to earn this additional burden of borrowing, the obvious question that is being asked by all is why government of India would not borrow and compensate States to fulfill its constitutional commitments.
He said that following the call of the Prime Minister who said ‘Jaan Hai To Jahan Hai’ all economic activities had come to a grinding halt in the times of covid-19 pandemic but now as the economy is in a precarious situation and active covid cases are increasing every day the state’s need more fun to take care of farmers unorganised sector the migrant workers and the unemployed youth. He said that the state faced a sudden influx of more than 7 lakh migrant workers and at this critical juncture the state naturally expected the Centre to give more than just the admissible compensation.