Grapes are sour: Piyush Goyal to Chidambaram on GST

New Delhi: Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on Sunday took a jibe at Congress leader P. Chidambaram for criticising and terming the Goods and Service Tax (GST) as ‘flawed’.

Speaking to media, the Finance Minister said that since there was no disruption in the implementation of the GST, so the ‘grapes are sour’ for the Congress.

“There was no disruption and economic growth was not affected due to the implementation of GST. I would like to tell P Chidambaram that Angoor khatte hain (Grapes are sour),” Goyal said.

This came after Chidambaram said that he failed to understand how the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi could celebrate the first anniversary of the rolling out of the GST regime, when it was well known that it has done many bad things in a big way and big things in a bad way since coming to power in May 2014.

Senior Congress leader and former finance minister P. Chidambaram said, “Government did bad things in a big way – demonetisation, and big things in a bad way – GST. The design, structure, infrastructure backbone, rates and implementation of the GST were so flawed that the GST has become a bad word among businesspersons, traders, exporters and common citizens.”

The GST was rolled out in July last year after months of deliberation.

Launched at midnight on June 30 by Prime Minister Modi and then President Pranab Mukherjee, the taxation scheme aimed at bringing all taxes into a single window along the lines of the ‘One Nation – One Tax – One Market goal. (ANI)