Days after mega Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan was made the Goods and Services Tax (GST) ambassador by the government, Congress has urged the actor to withdraw from the campaign. Amitabh Bachchan was named the ambassador for GST just weeks before it is scheduled to be implemented.
According to a PTI report, Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam had urged Sr Bachchan to withdraw from the campaign to avoid backlash from the traders at a later stage. Nirupam said that even though the Congress was for the implementation of the GST from the very beginning, it is current format under which the plan is being rolled out is what the party has a problem with.
“The GST was a brilliant idea thought of by the Congress. It is another story that the BJP opposed it all the while it was in the opposition. But after coming to power, it started diluting the basic concepts of the GST, and that was not acceptable to us,” PTI quoted Sanjay Nirupam as saying.
While speaking to the reporters in Mumbai, the Congress asserted that even though the opposition party sought GST as a single tax for the entire country, the central government had introduced 4 tax slabs and 3 different sub-types of GST and only made it complicated.
“It has become very complicated now. Traders and service providers are required to fill three long forms every month. Thus, the basic purpose of the GST is defeated. This is unlike the way the GST has been implemented in other countries,” Sanjay Nirupam told the reporters.
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“Some people are creating a confusion that we are opposing the same GST that we passed. But this is not true. We have always been for the GST but not in this format. We tried for three years to get our reservations noticed by the government but they (the BJP) then started maligning us so we had to pass it,” he added.
He further said that this was the reason why he was “suggesting” Amitabh Bachchan to withdraw from the campaign and not be a part or every “foolishness” of the BJP.
“That is why I am suggesting Amitabh Bachchan should not be a party to every foolishness of the BJP. You (Amitabh Bachchan) are a known person and have a wonderful reputation which may get maligned if there is a backlash from traders. Being your fan, I suggest that you withdraw yourself from the GST campaign,” he said.
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