SHIMLA-21^st December, 2024-The 55th Meeting of the GST Council was held under the chairmanship of Mrs Nirmala Sitharaman Union Finance Minister at Jaisalmer in Rajasthan today. The Himachal Pradesh delegation was led by Technical Education Minister Rajesh Dharmani.

He raised the issue of compensating the State on the analogy of the 'Kyoto Protocol' which provides for compensating low carbon emission countries in comparison to the Nations with high carbon emissions. He also argued in favour of factoring in low population density.

Sh. Dharmani took up the issue of GST compensation and urged to introduce some arrangements so that hilly states like Himachal could be compensated for loss of revenue due to GST implementation. He also took up the issue of Rs. 200 crore demand notices issued by CGST authorities to toll lessees of Himachal Pradesh.

Sh. Dharmani emphasized that the Central GST department's notices need to be annulled in view of the law position and requested to further clarify the issue.

The Council deliberated extensively on easing of the tax burden in the insurance sector before. Sh. Dharmani strongly advocated in favour of exempting individual health and term insurance policies especially for women, children and senior citizens. He also argued in favour of exempting GST on research and development for initial ten to fifteen years including for Public as well as private entrepreneur.

The recommendations made by the Council in this meeting are expected to result in easing the compliance burden of the businesses and benefit large sections of consumers.

Earlier, in the pre-budget meeting held yesterday at Jaisalmer, Sh. Dharmani also made a strong case for establishing 'Adaptation Fund' for creating disaster-resilient infrastructure across the State. He urged the Finance Minister to provide at least 50% central share to acquire land for expansion of Kangra Airport and ongoing Railway Projects i.e. Bhanupalli-Bilaspur rail project and Chandigarh Baddi railway projects. He also urged that these projects should be purely implemented by the central government in place of Joint Ventures and Himachal being a hilly state and having an International border with China should be exempted from paying its share.

In the pre-budget meeting, the Minister also advocated for continuing Special Central Assistance (SCA) and enhancing RDG grants and Central Road Infrastructural Fund (CRIF) which has been decreased from Rs 11,140 crores in 2020-21 to Rs 3,256 crores in 2025-26.

Apart from this he also requested the Union Finance Minister to include Ropeways under the PMGSY scheme and also provide the 10% state share & five years maintenance cost of PMGSY works and emphasized on establishing Skill University in the State with multi-disciplinary institutions of Technical, Vocational Education & Research with special focus on Geometrics Engineering, Geo-sciences, Environment Engineering, Disaster related studies, New Age Technology courses etc.

He strongly advocated for establishing satellite towns in the State by introducing new provisions under Forest Conservation Act as the only way to establish such town is by diverting forest land. He also stressed on the need to provide funds for sewerage treatment facilities in rural areas and Natural Farming & Milk processing and also to establish Agro Parks.

He also urged the union Finance Minister to increase Customs duty from 50% to 100% on import of Apples so as to protect the interest of Apple growers.

The Finance Minister assured to look into the demands to settle the issues raised.

The state's delegation also included Commissioner GST Dr. Yunus and Additional Commissioner Rakesh Sharma.