KCR vows to fight against GST

Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao on Sunday vowed to wage a relentless battle against the 12 per cent slab imposed by the Union government on various irrigation, housing and other infrastructure projects that were aimed at people’s welfare.

Questioning the propriety of levying high GST slabs on works taken up before June 30 (the GST came into force only on July 1), the Chief Minister pointed out that since the project estimates were prepared keeping in view the five per cent VAT in existence earlier, it would not be possible to change them.

The Chief Minister was reviewing the situation arising out of the high tax slabs at a high level meeting at Pragathi Bhavan here. “The Centre should rethink about this. I hope it will respond positively on the issue, failing which we have no option but to wage a legal battle. We will write a detailed letter with all the inputs and data to the Prime Minister and based on his response, we will finalise the next plan of action,” the Chief Minister said.

Chandrashekhar Rao had earlier said he would write the letter to the Prime Minister on



Sunday but decided to put it off to gather necessary information on the actual impact that the GST would have on various projects including Mission Bhagiratha, two-bedroom housing scheme, roads as also on the State exchequer.

The meeting discussed at length about all the departments that would be hit by the 12 per cent GST. Officers from the departments concerned placed their estimates before the Chief Minister. The officers concerned will meet on Monday and give a final touch to the statistics, after which the Chief Minister will write the letter to the Prime Minister with all the details.

The high level meeting to discuss the points to be incorporated in the letter to the Prime Minister was attended by Chief Secretary SP Singh, TS Genco Chairman D Prabhakar Rao, Special Chief Secretary (Irrigation) SK Joshi, Government Advisor GR Reddy, Senior IAS officers Somesh Kumar, Shivshankar, Shanti Kumari, Sandeep Sultania, Anil Kumar, Sunil Sharma, Dana Kishore, Sridevi, GHMC Commissioner Janardhan Reddy, E-in-Cs Muralidhar, Ravinder Rao, Ganapati Reddy and Vijay Prakash.