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Finance bill cleared by Parl amid Oppn uproar
The Opposition continued its demand for an investigation by a Joint Parliamentary Committee into Hindenburg Research’s report alleging that the Adani Group indulged in fraud and the manipulation of its stock price, which meant that no debate was possible despite 10 hours being allocated for it
The parliamentary process for approval of the ₹45 lakh crore Union Budget ended on Monday with the Upper House returning the Finance Bill to the Lok Sabha without any discussion, a fact that Rajya Sabha chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar termed “most unfortunate”.
The Opposition continued its demand for an investigation by a Joint Parliamentary Committee into Hindenburg Research’s report alleging that the Adani Group indulged in fraud and the manipulation of its stock price, which meant that no debate was possible despite 10 hours being allocated for it. The Rajya Sabha, however, recommended an amendment , correcting a typo on the tax rate on the Securities Transaction Tax. The Lok Sabha then cleared the Finance Bill, marking an end to the year’s budgetary process.
Passed through Parliament with dozens of amendments, the Finance Bill 2023 focuses on capital investment as a key driver of growth and employment, with the outlay raised by 33% to ₹10 lakh crore. Taking grants-in-aid to states together, the effective capital expenditure of the Centre is budgeted at ₹13.7 lakh crore, which will be 4.5% of the GDP. The Budget for FY24 also focused on tax-rationalisation, particularly for the new, exemption-free income tax regime, incentives to domestic manufacturing with emphasis on micro, small and medium enterprises and social upliftment.
Earlier, after the Rajya Sabha returned the Finance Bill, 2023 as well as other money bills such as the Jammu and Kashmir budget and appropriation bills to the Lok Sabha through voice vote without any discussion, Dhankar said: It is “most unfortunate” as the House is meant for discussions, and debate “to put across points that matter in larger public interest” … “not availing this 10-hour of discussion is not very wholesome”.
The entire proceeding took just few minutes amid sloganeering.
On Friday, the Lok Sabha approved the Budget in less than 15 minutes without any discussion with the house seeing similar protests. “The worst message from a parliamentary democracy is to approve a Budget without discussion… ₹45,03,097 crore will be raised and spent for the ‘people’ in 2023-24 without the people’s representatives offering their views on the Budget,” Congress leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram said in a tweet on Friday.
“They really deserve to do some serious introspection,” Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri said, when asked about the Congress protests.
Meanwhile, leaders of 16 opposition parties, mostly dressed in black in a rare show of unity, on Monday continued their demand for a joint parliamentary committee on the Adani issue and protested against the disqualification of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in Parliament on Monday.
Opposition unity got a fillip with Trinamool Congress, the second largest opposition outfit in Parliament, joining the anti-Bharatiya Janata Party demonstrations after a long time. However, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena skipped the protests, objecting to Gandhi’s comment that he won’t apologize for his comments in London as he was not Savarkar.
“Today, by wearing black, we want to show Modi ji is ending democracy in this country one by one,” Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said.
While moving the Finance Bill, 2023 in the Rajya Sabha, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman drew the attention of the chair to the one amendment for consideration -- to correct the rates of Securities Transaction Tax (STT) on selling options in the Bill that was passed by the Lok Sabha on Friday. The amendment in the Clause 174 substituted “0.05%” with “0.0625%” as there was a typographical error which was corrected, a government official said on condition of anonymity.
The Finance Bill 2023 has over five dozen amendments including providing relief to taxpayers exceeding the lowest taxable slab ₹7 lakh by a whisker, removing the tax benefit available to debt mutual funds, increasing tax scrutiny on credit card payments for foreign tours , and setting up of a much-awaited appellate tribunal for the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime. It also had an amendment on the creation of a committee to review the New Pension Scheme for government employees, amidst a political battle; several Opposition-ruled states have said they will be moving to the old pension scheme.
While Sitharaman did not speak on the Finance Bill in the Upper House on Monday, she did give an explanation on some of the key amendments in the Lower House on Friday.
“One amendment [in the Finance Bill] is for the GST Council, which is establishing the tribunal,” she had said. The Council on February 18 agreed to table a draft legislation in the current session of Parliament to establish the GST Appellate Tribunal (GSTAT) after stakeholders’ (states and Union Territories) consultations. The law bringing GST into effect in July 1, 2017 has provisions to set up an appellate tribunal for disputes between assessees and the authorities – in its absence, the disputes ended up in the high courts, which was time consuming and expensive.
On bringing credit card payments for foreign tour packages under TCS, the finance minister said: “It has been represented that payments for foreign tours through credit cards are not being captured under the Liberalized Remittance Scheme, the LRS, and such payments escape tax collection at source. The Reserve Bank is being requested to look into this with a view to bring credit card payments for foreign tours within the ambit of LRS and tax collection at source thereon.”
