BJP sources: Confident that the Centre will ease GST before Gujarat polls

Observing growing discontent among the Gujarati traders' community that was tangled up in the Goods and Services Tax regime, the Bharatiya Janata Party pushed its own government at the Centre to tweak the new system in the run-up to Assembly polls in the state.

BJP sources say they are confident that the Centre will ease the tax regime before the polls so that it does not face any reaction during voting.

Analysts say thousands of small businesses are struggling to keep up with the complex rules, diverting resources that could have been devoted to productive activity. Explaining the challenges being confronted by traders, a senior BJP leader told Mail Today, "Yes, we know they have been facing problems."

The leader also said the party realises that GST has become a big election issue in Gujarat. Traders from the state have repeatedly hit the streets, claiming complications in the filing process and thousands of crores in losses since the reform was implemented this year.

However, the BJP leader said nobody knows the businessmen of Gujarat more than PM Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah.

He admitted that the new generation of the business community is more agitated and reactive. The leader told this reporter that the urgent revisions made in the GST should not imply that the Congress is giving the BJP a tough fight in Gujarat.

He said the traders in the state remember vividly the "inspector raj" that prevailed there under the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre when there was no GST. The leader said the Centre brought down the GST rates not out of some apprehension of losing votes but out of concern for the core constituency.

The Congress, led by its vice-president, Rahul Gandhi, has been campaigning aggressively across the state in a bid to tap into the resentment of small businessmen over the tax system.

The BJP leader said the concern for Gujarat was essential for the country's economic health. When asked whether the party would exert further pressure on the Modi government to cut GST rates, he said such specifics cannot be discussed with the media.