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| Not only the opposition but Congress too against fresh taxes in J&K | | |
Early Times Report
Jammu, Mar 8: The state unit of the Congress is opposed to any plan of the Government to impose additional taxes in the budget proposals that are to be presented in the state legislature on March 12. Senior Congress functionaries today said that the Finance Minister, A.R. Rather, should discuss the issue of imposing fresh taxes with the Congress with which the National Conference shares power in Jammu and Kashmir.
These functionaries said that before levying fresh taxes the issue should be discussed in the cabinet and in the previous meeting of the cabinet there was no mention about the plan of imposing additional taxes.Number of congress ministers confirmed that the matter was not discussed in the previous cabinet meeting.In the meeting allocations of various departments and allied issues were discussed.
Congress functionaries said that the party members will oppose fresh taxes because of the weak tax base in the state which is yet to be a developed state as far as the sectors of agriculture and industry are concerned."We have to watch the interests of the people of the state and any fresh taxes will definitely burden the people which is not acceptable to us,"said a couple of senior congress leaders.
One congress leader said that if the Finance Minister decided to impose fresh taxes people would blame the congress for it as "we share power with the National Conference. "He said already the Congress led UPA Government has been giving liberal financial assistance to the state during the last seven years and "we suggest to the finance minister to work out a plan for additional resource mobilisation instead of imposing additional taxes."He said that the Congress was in favour of strict austerity measures and for adequate measures for the recovery of taxes,excise and power tariff and once there was improvement in the resource mobilisation there will be no need to impose a dose of fresh taxes.
As far as the three main opposition parties are concerned they are readying their guns for firing against the Government if new taxes were imposed.Leaders belonging to the PDP,the BJP and the Panthers Party said that "we will oppose plan of imposing fresh taxes tooth and nail."A senior PDP leader said that when the PDP shared power or led the coalition Government no dose of heavy taxes was imposed because the scope for levying additional taxes was very limited in Jammu and Kashmir.
Leaders of the opposition said that during the last 20 years various sectors,including that of agriculture,industry,horticulture and tourism had been badly affected by militancy related violence.Hence people were neither in a position nor prepared for paying additional taxes.They said that during the last two years cess on petrol had made the fuel highly costly and the recent hike in petrol has left no scope for the finance minister to continue with the cess.They also wanted no change in tax and excise structure which have reached the saturation point in Jammu and Kashmir.It was better,they argued,to have financial discipline than banking on additional taxes for wasting on luxuries.The opposition members of the state legislature hinted that they would disrupt the House proceedings if additional taxes were proposed in the budget. |
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