MLAs fail to grill Finance minister T M Thomas Isaac on GST

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A GST session where legislators from the left and the right were expected to take on finance minister T.M. Thomas Isaac on Tuesday with some probing questions turned out to be a tame affair with only a smattering of CPM MLAs, and a couple of CPI MLAs, attending.  Among the legislators only V.K.C. Mammed Koya, CPM’s Beypore MLA, seemed interested.

And Mr Koya’s only concern was about securing input tax credit for his footwear business from Isaac. Some of the young CPM MLAs walked out right after Dr Isaac introduced the topic. No one seemed particularly interested. He was a tad disappointed as he came into the hall of the Legislative Complex, where the interaction was organised by Legislative Secretariat and Kerala Union of Working Journalists.  

“The attendance will be lean today as there will be no one from the Congress. (Congress MLAs were taking part in the 70-km long cloth banner demonstration at that time.) I will have to talk to the Speaker on whether to conduct the programme today,” he said in an informal chat with those who had reached the hall. Cancelling the interaction was out of question as Speaker P. Sreeramakrishnan and three ministers — labour minister T.P. Ramakrishnan, education minister C. Ravindranath, and ports minister Kadannappally Ramachandran — had by then arrived.

Dr Isaac, while giving a lowdown on GST and its impact, essentially said that he expected the growth in GST revenue to pick up, even touch 20 per cent, in the second half of 2018-19 fiscal. He even suggested that the state would either sink or float with GST. Later, CPI’s Bijimol asked, the only question that was potentially embarrassing for Dr Isaac, why he had supported GST. “The Parliament had already passed a law,” Dr Isaac said, hinting that he had no choice. 

“I should have either taken an ideological stand and kept away from any GST discussion or intervened and fought to restructure the regime to suit the state’s needs. I opted for the latter,” he added. Isaac but emphasised, as if he was keen to satisfy the handful of Left MLAs present, that GST was a neo-liberal construct and regressive. When the education minister wanted to know whether GST would support small local ventures, Isaac gave an emphatic no. “Isolated markets will be destroyed, everything will move towards a unified market,” he said.