Winter session advanced by a month, to start from Nov 16

NEW DELHI: Winter session of Parliament will start on November 16. It will be a month-long session that will end on December 16, the cabinet committee on parliamentary

NEW DELHI: Winter session of Parliament will start on November 16. It will be a month-long session that will end on December 16, the cabinet committee on parliamentary affairs decided on Thursday.

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The winter session usually starts in the third or fourth week of November, but was advanced to achieve the government’s ambitious target of rolling out the Goods and Services Tax (GST) — a uniform indirect tax regime that will subsume all central and local levies such as excise, octroi and value added tax — from April 1 next year.

It’s also in keeping with the government’s plan to advance the presentation of the general budget by about a month. The budget is usually presented on the last working day of February, but the government has decided to advance it to start the process of revenue mobilisation and capital expenditures from April 1, the first day of the financial year.

Parliament passed the Constitution (122nd) Amendment Bill for GST in August, but it has to clear the Central GST and Integrated GST bills before its rollout from April 1, 2017, as envisaged by the NDA government.

These two enabling laws, while empowering the Centre to levy the GST on goods and services and collect it on inter-state trade and commerce, are expected to specify the range of GST rates, exempted items and compensation, among others. These issues are being deliberated upon by the GST Council headed by finance minister Arun Jaitley.