• Notification Date: 01-09-2023
• Notification No: N/A

Many Opponent Parties stayed out of the Special Session held by Modi Govt for GST Rollout

Less than a month after the Monsoon Session ended, Parliament is set to convene again for a special session from September 18-22, following the G20 Summit in New Delhi. There is no agenda set for the five-sitting session, with Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Pralhad Joshi’s post on X only saying: “Amid Amrit Kaal looking forward to have fruitful discussions and debate in Parliament.” 

It will be the second such special session – outside the regularly scheduled Budget, Monsoon and Winter Sessions – held by the Narendra Modi-led government. The last time Parliament held such a special session was in 2017. In a midnight sitting of both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, the government rolled out the Goods and Services Tax, calling it the biggest indirect tax reform since Independence, that replaced all central and state taxes with a single tax. It was the first time a legislative Act was the subject of a special midnight session – the previous ones were held to commemorate events of historic significance. 

Midnight sessions were previously held on August 15, 1997, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of India’s Independence; on August 9, 1992, for the 50th anniversary of the Quit India Movement; on August 15, 1972, to celebrate the silver jubilee of Independence; and the first ever, on August 14-15, 1947, on the eve of Independence. 

In 2017, the special session was held on June 30 in the Central Hall of Parliament to mark the rollout of the GST, which had been in the making for almost a decade. Modi and outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee addressed the session, attended by about 600 people, including Members of Parliament, chief ministers, GST Council members and other government officials. The addresses were accompanied by two short films on the GST. 

Former PMs Manmohan Singh and H D Deve Gowda were invited to share the dais with Modi, but Singh, along with several members of the Opposition and the Congress, declined to attend. Vice-President Hamid Ansari and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan were present. The then RBI Governor Urjit Patel, and several of his predecessors, were invited, though Raghuram Rajan, who had a falling out with the government, was not among them. Among the non-political figures present were singer Lata Mangeshkar, actor Amitabh Bachchan and industrialist Ratan Tata. 

Among the Opposition parties in attendance were the Janata Dal (United), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Biju Janata Dal (BJD), Samajwadi Party and Janata Dal (Secular). Apart from the Congress, the Trinamool Congress, Left, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), DMK and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) did not attend. 

The Opposition parties which boycotted the session described it as a “publicity stunt”. The Congress said that by convening the function in the Central Hall, the government was “insulting the very memory of India’s freedom struggle and the sacrifices associated with it”. “Perhaps for the BJP, 1947, 1972 and 1997 may be of no relevance because they played no role in securing India’s freedom,” said Ghulam Nabi Azad, who was in the Congress at the time. 

Mallikarjun Kharge, then the Congress’s leader in the Lok Sabha, said the UPA government had passed several significant Acts like the RTI Act, Food Security Act, MGNREGA and Right to Education Act, but never held such celebrations in the Central Hall. 

The Congress, among others, had been critical towards the GST and its implementation, despite the UPA government having initiated the reforms in 2009. 

While it was in the Opposition, the BJP too had been a fierce critic of the GST. In 2011, Yashwant Sinha, then a senior BJP leader and chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, had said: “They are doing a wrong thing.” In 2013, several state governments, including Gujarat, had opposed the Constitution Amendment Bill to enact the GST. In a note to the Centre, Modi’s Gujarat government had said the amendment was “retrograde in nature and completely against the tenets of fiscal federalism” and claimed it would lead to Rs 14,000 crore in losses every year for the state.