Tamil Nadu Finance Minister P.T.R. Palanivel Thiagarajan on Sunday said there was no need for him to apologise to Goans as demanded by Goa Transport Minister Mauvin Godinho stating he had only backed that State’s rights at recent 43rd GST Council meeting.
Mr. Godinho had claimed that Mr. Thiagarajan had at the virtual meeting asked him to “shut up” after he cast his “vote”. He alleged Mr. Thiagarajan’s case was that “since he comes from a big State, he should have a bigger vote”.
Denying all allegations, the Tamil Nadu Finance Minister said that he was clear in his position that “One State-One Vote” mode of the GST Council was fundamentally unfair and he always believed in a truly federal governance model. “Every statement I made during the entire meeting was entirely consistent with these two principles,” he said.
Mr. Thiagarajan alleged that the Goa Minister was vociferously and repeatedly against lowering the GST on COVID-19-related drugs and vaccines from 5% to 0% on humanitarian grounds.
“In any event, I have no need to apologise to the people of Goa, for I have done you no harm. I have strongly advocated for your State government’s rights. I do not require or expect any thanks for that, as my position was dictated by my principles of strengthening States’ rights and federalism with enhanced devolution,” he said in ‘Statement to the People of Goa’.
He said there was no agenda item in the GST Council regarding Goa’s intention to levy any cess. “So I simply could not have voted at all on an agenda item that did not exist, let alone vote against it!”
Mocks Godinho
Mocking at Mr. Godinho, Mr. Thiagarajan remarked, “I also charge the CM of Goa with perpetrating a misdemeanour on Goa’s citizens, and the GST Council, by nominating him [Mr. Godinho] to represent your beautiful State. Finally, I sincerely request the BJP, even across the political divide, to impose some minimal quality control on its ‘MLA Acquisition’ procedures. If it had done so, Goa, and the nation would be saved a lot of pain.”
Mr. Godinho’s statements at the meeting, Mr. Rajan claimed, were highly repetitive, largely vacuous, hectoring, mostly redundant to others’ inputs, supercilious, and with inputs from the Minister from Uttar Pradesh.
The Tamil Nadu government was always for States’ rights and a truly federal governance model that devolved powers from the Union government to the lowest level practical, he reiterated.