Hotel bill leads to PIL on GST

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court on Thursday served notice on the Centre, the TS government and the GST Council, seeking their response on a petition challenging the Constitutional validity of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017, the Integrated Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 and The Telangana State Goods and Services Act, 2017.

A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice A. Shankar Narayana was dealing with a petition by advocates S. Raj Kumar and G. Nagesh which contended that the Acts were violative and ultra vires of the Constitution.

The petitioners said the Constitution had not provided for multiple taxing authorities on a single event.

They said that they had visited Kamat Hotel at Basheerbagh on Independence Day for breakfast, which was taxed twice once by the Centre and again by the state government at Rs 34.92 each.  

They said that the Constitution had vested the Legislature and Parliament with the power to enact tax laws.

Due to delegation of power to the GST Council, the role of legislatures to determine, taxes had been removed and limited to endorsing the recommendations of the GST Council.

They contended that the 101st Amendment Act 2016 which facilitated the GST legislations was damaging the basic features and destroying the basic structure of the Constitution.