Rahul Gandhi sees forward movement in GST

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who had strong reservation on the NDA government’s GST bill for different reasons, appears to have changed the strategy and sees some forward movement on it.

The BJP and its top leaders had blocked the UPA government’s GST bill for nearly seven years purely on political grounds as they did not want the Manmohan Singh government to get credit for it.

And the generation-next in the Congress was against supporting the Modi government, especially when some Union ministers and the BJP hardliners repeatedly talked of the “Congress-mukta Bharat (to make India free from Congress)” and thereby tried to isolate the grand old party. This had angered Mr Gandhi who was seen opposing the GST bill under one pretext or other.

Some Congress leaders had privately said the RSS is against the GST while AICC spokespersons said recently that the BJP is sharply divided on it. But on Thursday, the change in the Congress’ strategy became clearly perceptible.

After making a fiery speech on the escalating prices of essential commodities in the Lok Sabha, Mr Gandhi indicated that he would raise this issue aggressively in the upcoming UP and Punjab Assembly polls. Rise in the attacks on dalits, price rise and growing unemployment are the issues on which the Modi government and the BJP are on the defensive. Mr Gandhi would build up his party’s electoral campaign on it and thereby target the PM. This is because no other party in UP and Punjab, including the SP, BSP, SAD and the BJP, would talk of price rise and unemployment.

Significantly, Mr Modi is the common target of Mr Gandhi and AAP supremo —Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal at a time when no non BJP chief minister or top leader of political parties is taking confrontation with the PM.