The Congress has slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over high price, corruption, and rising taxes on certain items. It pointed out that the prices of 143 items have been increased irrationally affecting the middle-class and low-income category.
Addressing the media, Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi blamed the BJP for high prices and accused it of looting the middle-class. Calling BJP treacherous, deceitful and dubious, he said: “There is a proposal to increase 92% of items in a list of 143 (items) to the highest available slab category of 28%. Something like this hits the common man but it also hits the middle-class. The middle class, maybe, is above the lowest class but they are hit badly. Don’t forget that these are 92% of a large list of 143 items and these items include handbags, suitcases, colour TV sets below 32 inches, walnuts, chewing gums, chocolates, custard powder, and so on.”
Claiming that he doesn’t find the rationality to include these items in the highest category, Singhvi accused the BJP of increasing the price of these items without any possible explanation.
He quoted an article, where the late Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had stated, “Except on luxury and sin goods, the 28% slab has almost been phased out. Zero and 5% slabs will always remain. As revenue increases further, it will give an opportunity to policymakers to possibly merge the 12% and 18% slab into one rate, thus, effectively making the GST a two-rate tax.”
Quoting a statement from the article, Singhvi said, “Exactly contrary to this your revenue by your own published figure is an “all time high” in March 2022 at 1.23 lakh crores and it is 30% higher than the monthly average and you’re doing this in the reverse direction.” He also stated that the BJP has five slabs and they are not speaking of sin and luxury goods.
He also spoke of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who had stated that the revenue-neutral rate for the GST came down from 15.5% to 11.6%. He concluded that if the average revenue-neutral rate has come down to 11.6% then there is no loss in the revenue, henceforth, moving the price of certain items after a few months is pointless.