Trade bodies threaten civil disobedience movement over new tax law in IHK

Amid growing chorus against Goods and Services Tax (GST), Kashmir's prominent trade bodies and civil society members have threatened to launch a civil disobedience movement if the puppet regime goes ahead with implementing the new tax law. Addressing a roundtable conference in Srinagar on the GST issue, former High Court judge Hasnain Masoodi said that occupied Kashmir would lose its law-making powers on taxation matters once the GST was implemented, KMS reported.
The conference was called by the civil society group, Kashmir Centre for Social and Development Studies (KCSDS), to discuss the GST issue that has snowballed into a major controversy in the territory. The former President of Federation Chamber of Industries Kashmir (FCIK), Syed Shakeel Qalandar, said that the GST would also affect the small industries which get tax exemptions and other incentives.
Seeking a wider consultation and discussion on the GST, former bureaucrat Muhammad Shafi Pandit, said that the draft legislation should be put in public domain. "The Finance Minister is saying that the draft legislation cannot be put in public domain on the pretext that it is privilege of the legislature but in countries like South Africa, the law-making process is taken to the village-level," he said. Secretary of Communist Party of India (Marxist), Muhammad Yousuf Tarigami said, "The GST regime is an attack on those fundamentals which we have, so far, protected."
Member of the so-called Kashmir Assembly, Engineer Abdur Rasheed said that the puppet administration was surrendering its powers by implementing the GST. The Chairman of pro-India Democratic Party Nationalist (DPN) Ghulam Hassan Mir said that there was no doubt in the fact that GST would dilute Kashmir's taxation powers. He criticized the puppet administration for failing to explain how it would protect the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. The leaders of pro-India National Conference, Showkat Ahmad Mir and Shammi Oberoi, opposed the implementation of GST.
A resolution passed at the roundtable conference said that the GST was completely unacceptable. "All the participants were of the view that a civil disobedience movement will be launched if the GST was implemented," the resolution read. Meanwhile, Kashmir Traders and Manufacturers Federation (KTMF) has called for a complete shutdown in the occupied territory on July 01, the day the Indian government is planning to implement GST in India. While the Kashmir Economic Alliance (KEA) has said that it would launch a hunger strike on the same day. Shaher-e-Khaas Traders Federation has also called for a strike on July 1 in case the puppet administration decides to go ahead with the implementation of GST.