Kerala’s Finance Minister, Thomas Isaac, has countered the two options offered by the central government on GST compensation, with two of his own.
If the centre isn’t willing to negotiate and the states don’t come around, the matter will likely be put to vote in the next GST Council meeting scheduled for Oct. 12. Isaac said the council’s decision will be binding. But that doesn’t stop states from activating the GST dispute resolution process or even moving the Supreme Court.
Now, we are bound by the council’s decision. So, we’ll follow that but we’ll have a dispute and we will argue and set up a dispute resolution mechanism in the next GST Council after that. And if no dispute resolution mechanism is set up, then, the option would be to go to the Supreme Court while complying with the decision of the council.Thomas Isaac, Finance Minister, Kerala
In fact, Isaac expressed surprise that a vote didn’t take place in the last meeting, which he said was abruptly called to an end. West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra made a similar comment to BloombergQuint.
After speaking for eight hours, suddenly the revenue secretary says the meeting is over, Isaac recounted. “So I said, don't take us for granted.” Isaac indicated a vote in that meeting may not have succeeded.
“I suspected at that moment, in the last half an hour of the last GST Council (meet), I wondered if there would have been sufficient states to vote for the centre’s proposal, for the centre to get the required majority — that is 75% of the votes.”
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