GST rollout: Govt calls for midnight session on June 30 to launch historic tax reform

To ensure smooth implementation of India's biggest tax reform Goods and Services Tax or GST, the Central government has called for a special midnight session of Parliament on June 30.

The special Parliament session would start around 11 pm on June 30 and end at 12.10 am on July 1. President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the special midnight session. The tax reform was originally piloted by Mukherjee when he was the Finance Minister in the previous UPA regime.

The government is all set to roll out the historic GST From mid-night of June 30-July 1. Speaking on the launch of the GST, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said: "I anticipate the revenues will grow... Now, trade and industry have to prepare themselves. When you go for a reform, you should not blink."

However, he also acknowledged that there would be some short term challenges while switching-over to GST. "We had been saying GST will be rolled out by July 1; nobody had any business not to be ready," Jaitley added.

President Pranab Mukherjee, the Vice-President, Lok Sabha Speaker and former Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and HD Deve Gowda will also be present on dais for GST launch.

The Members of Parliament, Chief Ministers and state Finance Ministers have also been invited to attend special midnight session which is to be held at Central Hall of Parliament.

Members of the GST Council have also been invited to attend the session where two short films on the GST will be screened. The GST Council met 17 times to chart out the modalities and tax rates that were to be fixed for the new tax regime.

Originally, the GST was to be launched from Vigyan Bhawan - the largest convention centre in the national capital that has hosted majority of the meetings of the GST Council.

But the historic Central Hall was thought to be a better choice considering the importance of the new tax code that unifies more than a dozen separate levies to create a single market with a population greater than the US, Europe, Brazil, Mexico and Japan put together.

GST has been dubbed as the most significant economic reform since BJP government came to power in 2014 and is expected to add as much as 2 percentage points to the GDP growth rate besides raising government revenues by widening the tax net.

A four-rate structure that exempts or imposes a low rate of tax of 5 per cent on essential items and top rate of 28 per cent on cars and consumer durables has been finalised. The other slabs of tax are 12 and 18 per cent.

(With inputs from PTI)