JOIN USAn unrelenting Congress on Tuesday forced the government to refer a Constitution amendment bill to pave the way for the long-pending Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill to the Rajya Sabha Select Committee.
With this, the government's last-minute hope to get the GST Bill passed in the second leg of the Budget Session fell flat. It will now have to wait till the Monsoon session to give it a try.
As the Rajya Sabha was reconvened in the afternoon after repeated adjournments, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley moved the motion to refer the bill to the Select Committee, consisting of 21 members drawn from across parties. The panel has been asked to report to the Rajya Sabha by the last day of the first week of the next session.
BJP MP Bhupender Yadav will chair the committee, which will also have the BJP's Chandan Mitra, the Congress' Mani Shankar Aiyar, the Trinamool Congress' Derek O'Brien, the NCP's Praful Patel, the DMK's Kanimozhi and the CPI's D Raja.
The other members are the BJP's Ajay Sancheti, the Congress' Madhusudan Mistry and Bhalchandra Mungekar, the SP's Naresh Agrawal, the JD-U's K C Tyagi, the AIADMK's A Navaneethakrishnan, the BSP's Satish Chandra Misra, the CPM's K N Balagopal, the BJD's Dilip Kumar Tirkey, the TDP's C M Ramesh, the Shiv Sena's Anil Desai, the SAD's Naresh Gujral, the PDP's Mir Mohammad Fayaz and independent MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar.
The GST Bill was cleared in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday after a walkout by the Congress, which made it clear that it would not be possible for them to back the bill in the Upper House without referring it to a Select Committee.
Though the Congress stands adamant on referring the bill to the committee, the Opposition is divided over supporting it. Only the AIADMK has publicly said it would oppose it, while the Congress has assured the government it would help in the bill's passage in the Monsoon session.