NC to boycott remaining Legislative session due to 'anti-people, vague' GST

Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir) [India], July 6 (ANI): The National Conference on Thursday asserted that the 'vague, ambiguous and anti-people resolution passed by the State legislature to extend the Goods and Services Tax (GST) to Jammu and Kashmir' was an unequivocal compromise with the special status of the state and amounts to a surrender of the fiscal autonomy of the state as guaranteed by the Constitution of India. With this, the party decided to boycott the remaining part of the legislative session as a protest against the Government's machinations to trample the aspirations of the people by demolishing the State's special status. In a meeting of the party's core group chaired by party president Farooq Abdullah, the National Conference apex political forum observed that the statement of the State Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu on the floor of the house terming the Article 370 of the Constitution of India as an obstruction to the development and progress of the state, "reflects the machinations of the ruling dispensation against the special political and constitutional identity of Jammu and Kashmir." The party said it is evident that the People's Democratic Party (PDP) has committed its total support to the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) ideological design to abrogate Article 370 of the Constitution of India. The National Conference (NC) warned the PDP-BJP Government that this misadventure is going to have wider ramifications and dangerous consequences. "In the garb of evolving a 'consensus', the State Government called a special session of the legislature to commit a monumental fraud on the people of Jammu and Kashmir by not explaining the contours of the safeguards in the GST regime that they have been repeatedly talking about over the last more than a month. The ruling alliance has used their majority in the legislature to muzzle the voice that reflected the aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir on this crucial and sensitive issue", the party said. The party dubbed the BJP state chief Sat Sharma's statement on the floor of the House that the GST implementation was "the biggest slap on the face of the separatists", as a glaring contradiction of earlier assertions made by the PDP-BJP alliance claiming that the extension of GST to the state was purely a taxation matter and had nothing to do with the politics and the identity of the state. "The party feels that the PDP has yet again exposed the hollowness of its deceitful, much-touted political agenda of 'Self Rule' with the sole objective of remaining glued to political power. However, the Core Group reiterated that National Conference would continue to fight for the rights and aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The party further said that it has always stood for the 'Idea of Jammu and Kashmir' as perceived and conceived by the founders of the party and would go to any extent to preserve it", the party said. Earlier on Tuesday, the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly witnessed a ruckus as the discussions over implementing the GST began. The discussion was disrupted by the Opposition MLAs, who said that the GST would infringe on the special status of the state. Due to this, Speaker Kavinder Gupta was forced to adjourn the House twice. Jammu and Kashmir is the only state where the GST has not been implemented yet. Meanwhile, in the entire country, the GST was implemented on July 1. (ANI)