Dimapur, November 24 (MExN): The Rising People’s Party (RPP) has reiterated its claim that the revenue accumulation through GST is enough to complete the foothill road project.
To “justify” their stand, RPP on Wednesday through a press release released the “total revenue collection before and after the implementation of GST in 2017.” See table
While questioning the government on non-completion of the foothill road, the party alleged that “this UDA government keeps on fooling the public that it has no money and yet the story is alarmingly different.”
It stated that “after the introduction of GST, revenue collection has tripled. It can be safely assumed that for the year 2021-22, the collection will cross Rs 1000 Crore and if we aggregate the GST collections for the last 3-4 years the amount is in several thousands of Crore. For a small state like ours, this is a colossal amount: so the question is, how’s the GST money being utilized?”
Given the GST collection, the state government making a grandiose statement in September that it was ready to release Rs 20 Crore for the project, a paltry amount is nothing short of fooling the public. It’s another story that the money is yet to be released, it stated.
RPP also said that the query before the Naga public is ‘are the MLAs aware of how the GST collection is being utilized? If yes, our MLAs should, for the sake of transparency, address the issue in public domain. If not, are all the MLAs prepared to raise the issue during this winter session of the Assembly, at least for the sake of Foothill Road?’
It added that till the “Finance department issues a proper clarification, the presumption is that thousands of crore of GST revenue continues to be mis-utilized, money which is more than sufficient to complete the Foothill Road several times over, and the conclusion is that the Chief Minister is responsible for the delay in completing the Foothill Road.”
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