Congress will clear GST in 15 minutes, says Rahul Gandhi

Mumbai: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said the Goods and Service Taxes (GST) Bill will be passed in Parliament in just “15 minutes” with the support of Congr-ess provided the Modi government agrees to the demands made by the party.

A “compromise with the government is possible on GST and it is by sitting across the table, but the government is not willing to do so,” he said. “The day the conditions are accepted, we will pass the GST (in Parli-ament). It will take just 15 minutes,” he said.

“We don’t want a GST where there’s no cap on taxes. We want a limitation on the maximum tax that can be charged. Also, dispute resolution must be fair and neutral. I don’t think its wrong of us to say that,” he said while explaining the conditions put by the Congress to back GST.

Mr Gandhi, while continuing his tirade against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government, said that the BJP has been promoting the RSS ideology which is against the spirit of India.

He also criticised the government’s handling of the Pathankot airbase terrorist attack and said that a handful of people were running the nation which was bad.

Mr Gandhi, speaking during an interactive session with students of NMIMS college at Vile Parle, said that rather than introducing innovative measures, the BJP government was replicating the successful initiatives by the Congress.

Mr Gandhi arrived at the campus nearly 35 minutes after the scheduled time. Admitting the delay, Mr Gandhi restricted his speech to 10 minutes and invited questions from his audience consisting of management students dressed in formal wear, Congress leaders and invitees of the college management.

While replying to a question on censorship and intolerance, Mr Gandhi said that the BJP policy of identifying people on the basis of their religion was the root of all problems.

“BJP identifies people as Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and not Indians. This is not what the Congress used to do, it treated everyone as Indians which was in line with the spirit of the nation. The BJP’s approach is detrimental to the growth of the country,” Mr Gandhi said.

To a question on whether politicians should be involved in sports, the Congress scion said that sports should be the prerogative of sportsmen and the different boards should be run by them rather than politicians.

With regards to the security threat to the country, he said the country was being run by three to four individuals as a result of which the security of the nation was at risk.

The Pathankot airbase incident shows how the BJP government is taking arbitrary decisions.

Rather than roping in the proper agency to tackle the terrorist attack, the Modi government referred to the national security advisor rather than the national security guard that specialises in formulating tactics.

When asked about his view on Indian educational institutions not being in the top 200 institutions in the world, Mr Gandhi said that he did not care for the rankings as the so called top institutions have a different approach than in India.

He further added that as the BJP government was just replicating institutions rather than coming up with innovative ones, the Indian educational institutions would find it difficult to make a mark for themselves.

He concluded the interaction by apologising to the students for the security hassles they had to go through to attend the session.