Pics: Spoorthi Ullal

Daijiworld Media Network – Mangaluru (LDS)

Mangaluru Jul 19: MLA U T Khader on Tuesday condemned the GST implementation on various commodities of daily use and shared that the common people are ultimately bearing the brunt of it.

He said that the central government has levied the GST on essential commodities such as milk, curd etc and this has eventually added to the burden of expenses on the common people. The finance department has been quite inconsiderate of their voices and interests. People have been shelling out their hard earned money and ironically, the food that is consumed, the basic stationery items used by students being pencils, maps, globes and others have all been levied with taxes. When Rahul Gandhi opined GST as "Gabbar Singh tax" the public mocked it. Now we can find that this is very relevant at this juncture", he said.

The very basic items such as jaggery, oats, wheat, and many others have been imposed with GST. Adding to this list are, solar water heaters, led lights, pumps used for wells, ink and other things have been levied with taxes, he lamented opining that humanity and culture had been eliminated from good governance. He said that India was running its governance on tax. “Nothing has benefited the people. The American culture has been adopted, yes, but what is concerning is that other important elements such as infrastructure etc., also had to be worked on here in our country, not solely the taxes. There is a lack of proper planning and implementation and these loopholes are quite visible, which are hindering the development of our country.” he remarked.

He alleged that the government was to be held responsible for all of this and all it had done was deceive people.

“What we can see ultimately is that the financial stability is lost, people are being deviated from the matters of prime concern. Earlier, such a tax was not levied on commodities. The GDP is on a gripping low, meted with steep decline. I demand to know if the government has done any good to the people. This is a signal to rise and awake. A massive gap between the government and people has resulted in miscommunication and mistrust,” he opined. "We fiercely protest this action as this has eventually undermined the spirit of democracy. We would be conducting protests to oppose this step at various levels.” he shared.

He said that various cases of money laundering, financial matters are kept away from the public's attention and the government is turning away from it. He regarded that the GST was the best policy that had been worst implemented by the BJP government. Congress leader Mithun Rai, Sahul Hameed, T K Sudhir, former MLC Ivan D'Souza, former MLA Abhayachandra Jain and others were present.