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Tuesday, Mar 01, 2005

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National

Roll back tax on cash withdrawals: Opposition

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, FEB. 28. Opposition parties, and even some of those who are technically supporting the United Progressive Alliance, were one in demanding a rollback of the proposed 0.1 per cent tax on more than Rs. 10,000 in cash withdrawals from banks.

This measure was condemned by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Samajwadi Party, the Janata Dal (United), the Telugu Desam Party, and found no takers even among parties friendly towards the Congress.

The former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and his colleagues in the BJP questioned the wisdom of imposing a tax on white tax-paid money in banks.

The former Finance Minister, Jaswant Singh, described this measure as "pitiable'' saying "it was sad that a Finance Minister had resorted to this, which would give needless trouble to ordinary people.''

But Mr. Vajpayee was not totally critical. He said that "it seemed okay for growth, but would lead to inflation.''

And both he and Mr. Jaswant Singh welcomed the restructuring of taxes and duties on petroleum products saying the step was "long overdue''.

But, the increase in the cess on petrol, Mr. Vajpayee said, "was unnecessary as there was enough money (from the existing cess) to finance the national highways project."

"We will fight to get this measure rolled back. This will help generate black money as people will prefer to keep money at home rather than put it in the banks,'' said the BJP deputy leader in the Lok Sabha, V.K. Malhotra. "It will promote inspector raj and lead to double taxation.''

The Samajwadi Party leader, Amar Singh, was equally angry that the poor man who might withdraw amounts over Rs. 10,000 from banks on occasions such as deaths and marriages would be taxed on his hard-earned savings.

He dismissed the entire budget exercise as "anti-poor, anti-people, and anti-common man.''

`Agriculture ignored'

The Telugu Desam Party leader, Yerran Naidu, said the Minister had failed to give a thrust to any specific area. "For everything a committee has been formed ... but not even a mention of the backward castes that constitute 50 per cent of the population ... agriculture should have been given top priority, but that has not happened ... all in all, it was a routine budget.''

Somewhat similar was the reaction of the Janata Dal (United) leader, Nitish Kumar, who described the budget as a "bunch of announcements,'' adding that the Rs. 7,000 crores given as a special package for Bihar over five years was "peanuts.'' Bihar had been betrayed, he said. But among the former NDA partners, the National Conference leader, Farooq Abdullah, stood out for his generous praise of a "very good budget, which will benefit the country and Jammu and Kashmir.''

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