NEW DELHI: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said the first move towards the landmark GST was made by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government 17 years back, and not the Congress.
The Vajpayee Government constituted a task force which in 2003 submitted a report saying central and state levies should be merged or unified into a Goods and Services Tax (GST), he said at a public rally on the new tax regime.
Jaitley said the Government changed in 2004 and the incoming Congress saw merit in the argument mooted in the report.
The then Finance Minister P Chidambaram in 2006 spoke of GST and set 2010 as deadline for rolling out the new indirect tax regime, he said, adding he could not implement the plan.
In 2011, the then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is now the President, introduced a Constitutional Amendment to bring GST.
But the UPA could not get all states onboard because they could not resolve how to compensate losses to manufacturing states arising because of GST being a destination-based tax, he said. (AGENCIES)
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