NEW DELHI: After finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in Rajya Sabha that there was no customs duty on imported medicine for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), Congress MP Vivek Tankha told the RS chairman that the finance minister should have clarified that former Maharashtra chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had misled the country on the tax waiver.
Devendra Fadnavis had thanked Prime Minister Modi for waiving the tax on the said medicine in case of baby Teera.
Tankha last week told the house that children suffering from SMA faced immense hardships because the only drug for the problem costs Rs16 crore and tax and duties on import. He had appreciated the Prime Minister for waiving Rs.6 crore taxes in case of the child from Pune.
Tankha said the baby Teera case was taken up by Fadnavis who later publicly thanked the Prime Minister for tax waiver as did the baby’s parents.
However, the finance minister on Friday made a suo Motu clarification on the issue, in which she said there was no duty on life saving drugs for personal use.
Expressing his dismay at the minister’s clarification, Tankha shot off a letter to RS Chairman Venkaiah Naidu, Saying “if the public statements of Fadnavis attributing the credit of the tax waiver of Rs.6 crore to the PM were not true, I expected the FM to state so before the Parliament that the nation was misled by the tweet and letters of Fadnavis. But sadly this was not done. In fact, my zero hour submission was made to look like an ignorant statement placed before the Parliament.”