New Delhi, Jul 22: Conceding a year long demand, sanitary pads today exempted from GST as the GST Council reduced tax rates on an array of daily use appliances and products.
While GST tax on sanitary pads was cut from 12 per cent to zero, rakhis were exempted from the tax, Finance Minister Piyush Goyal told reporters here.
“Sanitary napkins exempted from GST,” Goyal said.
Among items on which GST was reduced include footwear, small televisions, water heater, electric ironing machines, refrigerators, lithium ion batteries, hair dryers, vacuum cleaners, food appliances and ethanol.
“GST Council cuts tax rate on an array of products. Rakhis have been exempted from GST, tax on ethanol has been cut to 5 per cent, small handicrafts have been exempted,” Goyal said.
Besides, tax rates on worked up Kota stone, sand stone and similar quality of local stones were cut from 18 to 12 per cent, with the purpose of avoiding classification disputes.
The value limit of footwear was enhanced from Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 for 5 per cent rate.?
GST on 17 items used by middle class viz Paints, Refrigerators, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, storage water heaters, TVs up to 68 cm was reduced from 28 to 18 per cent.
The next GST Council meeting will be held on August 4.
New Delhi, Jul 22: A group of RTI activists on Saturday met Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh and discussed issues regarding citizens’ right to information and related concerns.
During the meeting, Singh allayed the apprehensions about there being any move to dilute the Right to Information (RTI) Act, as reported by a section of the media.
On the contrary, he said, the government, in the last four years, had worked on the principle of increasing citizen participation in governance with more accountability and transparency, an official statement said.
The delegation of RTI activists, representing Right to Information Activists Social Welfare Society, shared Singh’s concern about frivolous RTI applications.
It suggested that a mechanism to check such applications be evolved, like imposing a fine or making it mandatory for the applicants to disclose their Aadhaar number, the statement said.
The delegation also favoured a continuous and aggressive awareness campaign to educate the masses about the utility of RTI to ensure transparency and simultaneously cautioning them against its misuse for mala fide motives, it said.
Singh said the government had made efforts to fill all the 11 vacancies of the Central Information Commission (CIC).
The CIC, under the previous governments, has at times even functioned with just three or four members, he said.
He added the government had tremendously brought down the pendency of RTI applications and also cut down the disposal time.
The minister said most of the public bodies, numbering around 2,000, have been brought under the purview of the RTI Act in the last four years.
New Delhi, Jul 20: Delhi is facing an acute shortage of public transport as only 5,554 buses against the required number of 11,000 vehicles are plying in the national capital, the Supreme Court was informed .
In an affidavit filed before the apex court, the Delhi government has said its “all-out efforts” to augment a bus fleet to meet the requirement of 11,000 buses was hindered due to non-availability of land for depots and repeated failure of tenders issued by the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) for procurement of vehicles.
It said as per the directions of the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court, the total requirement of bus fleet in the city was 11,000, but presently only 5,554 CNG-run buses were being operated.
The Delhi government has said that there were 1,275 low floor AC buses, 2,506 low floor non-AC buses and 101 Green standard floor non-AC buses.
Besides these, 1,672 orange colour standard low floor buses were being operated under the cluster scheme, which was introduced in 2011 to replace the erstwhile blue line buses, it said.
“The present fleet of buses in Delhi is 5,554 and the requirement is of 11,000 buses. The Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) is making all-out efforts to augment the bus fleet to meet this requirement, but is hindered in its efforts due to non-availability of depot land to bring cluster buses and repeated failure of tenders issued by the DTC for procurement of buses,” the affidavit said.
Bengaluru, Jul 18: TRAI Chairman R S Sharma has said that apps should collect minimal data just as UIDAI does to give 12-digit Aadhar numbers to people.
Some apps are ridiculously collecting more-than-required data and the customers are unaware of what is being done with it, he said.
“For Aadhar enrollment, we collect just four set of data – your name, date of birth and your communication address. Nothing more, nothing less. Similarly every app must collect as much data as is required,” Sharma told ET Now in an interview here yesterday.
“Data minimisation should be one of the principles just as Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) adopts to collect data of people,” he said.
TRAI had noted that the existing framework of data protection of telecom consumers is “not sufficient” and that all entities in the digital ecosystem which handle personal data should be brought under a data protection framework.
These recommendations are expected to have wide reaching implications for tech titans like Apple and Facebook as well as apps like Paytm.
Asked whether the DoT has powers to create rules or regulations proposed by TRAI, Sharma said it is for the government to decide.
Asked whether TRAI has power to implement such rules before the government legislates them, Sharma said he has the jurisdiction to protect consumers’ interest in telecom sector.
Sharma said, there is regulatory imbalance because these entities are not following any law and till the government comes up with a broad framework, it is but prudent to apply telecom rules on them.
Replying to a query, Sharma said TRAI is not for applying same encryption standards for different sectors including telecom or Aadhar.
“There are different rules for different sectors. For example in telecoms, the maximum encryption is proposed to be 40 bits. UIDAI has highest level of encryption where it is 2048 bits. So, what we are saying is that probably there is a need to have a general policy on encryption and we are not saying that we should apply same encryption standard,” he said.
Sharma said the encryption standard should be proportional to the security that needs to be achieved.
New Delhi, Jul 15 : Government think tank Niti Aayog is working on a proposal to replace LPG subsidy with cooking subsidy in order to extend the benefits to people using piped natural gas and biofuels for cooking purposes, a top official said today.
Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar said subsidy should be applicable for all fuels that are used for cooking.
At present, the government extends subsidy to users of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG).
“Niti Aayog is working on a proposal to replace LPG subsidy with cooking subsidy. LPG is a specific product, a subsidy should be for larger set of all products/ fuels which are used for cooking.
“(For) all fuels which are used for cooking, subsidy should be applicable. Because if there are some cities where PNG (Piped Natural Gas) is used, then it is only logical that the subsidy be extended to them also,” Kumar told PTI in an interview.
Kumar’s comments also come against the backdrop of apprehensions in certain quarters that subsidy only for LPG users is inhibiting the adoption of clean and cheap fuels such as biofuels in rural areas and PNG in urban areas.
The changes pertaining to cooking subsidy are likely to be incorporated in the draft National Energy Policy 2030. The draft was made public last year.
After inter-ministerial consultations, the policy would be taken up by the Cabinet.