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It will be a starry midnight in the historic Central Hall on 30 June – the launch event of what is being called a historic tax reform in India. Among the attendees will be megastar Amitabh Bachchan and industry doyen Ratan Tata.
The last midnight event held was in 1997, on the occasion of golden jubilee of the Independence.
The launch event of GST will be graced by President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Former prime ministers Manmohan Singh and HD Deve Gowda too have been invited to the GST launch, that is set to dramatically re-shape the over US $2 trillion Indian economy.
Congress party has, however, decided to boycott the event to protest against the hardship being caused to small and medium enterprises and traders. The Left and TMC too are boycotting the event.
The launch event will start at 11 pm on June 30 and extend into the midnight, coinciding with the rollout of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, official sources said.
The list of invites include:
- Manmohan Singh, former Prime Minister
- HD Deva Gowda, former Prime Minister
- Sumitra Mahajan, Lok Sabha Speaker
- Hamid Ansari, Vice President
- Lata Mangeshkar, Singer
- Amit Shah, BJP President
- Yashwant Sinha, former Finance Minister
- Prakash Singh Badal, former Chief Minister of Punjab
- Abdul Rahim Rather, National Conference Leader
- Sushil Kumar Modi, former GST Council Chairman
- Asim Dasgupta, former finance minister of West Bengal
- K K Mani, former finance ministers of Kerala
- Urjit Patel, RBI Governor
- Bimal Jalan, former RBI Governor
- Y V Reddy, former RBI Governor
- D Subbarao, former RBI Governor
- Shashi Kant Sharma, CAG
- Vinod Rai, former CAG
- TN Chaturvedi, former CAG
- KV Chowdary, CVC
- Nasim Zaidi, Chief Election Commissioner
- Arvind Panagariya, Niti Aayog vice chairman
- E Sreedharan, Metro Man
- David R Syiemlieh, UPSC Chairman
- Vanaja N Sarna CBEC Chairman
- Sushil Chandra, CBDT Chairman
Senior lawyers Soli Sorabjee, KK Venugopal and Harish Salve as also heads of industry chambers – Pankaj Patel of FICCI, Shobana Kamineni of CII and Sunil Kanoria of Assocham – too are on the list of invitees.
Sources said Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar has written a letter to all Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs requesting for their presence.
Members of GST Council too have obviously been invited.
A gong will be sounded at midnight to signify the rolling out of GST.
How the GST Tax Came into Being
The GST Bill was originally piloted by Mukherjee when he was the Finance Minister in the previous UPA regime.
The GST Council, that brings together the central and state governments, has met 17 times to thrash out how the tax will work.
Originally, the launch of GST which had been in the works for over a decade, was to be done 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 indirect 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 will supposedly simplify a web of taxes, regulations and border levies by subsuming an array of central and state levies including excise duty, service tax and VAT.
It is expected to gradually reshape India's business landscape, making the world's fastest-growing major economy an easier place to do business.
(With inputs from PTI)
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