Jammu: The Omar Abdullah government in J&K on Saturday introduced its first bill in the Assembly, seeking to amend the UT’s Goods and Services Tax to align this with the Central law.
Deputy Chief Minister, Surinder Choudhary, on behalf of Chief Minister and Finance Minister Omar Abdullah, introduced the Jammu & Kashmir Goods and Service Tax (Amendment) Bill, 2025 in the house today.
The bill seeks to align J&K’s GST law with the amendments carried out in the Central Goods and Services Tax law.
The amendments are regulatory in nature i.e. to regulate tax and as such, the bill doesn’t involve recurring and non-recurring expenditure.
On August 5, 2019, the Constitution’s Articles 370 and 35A were abrogated and the state was divided into two Union Territories of J&K and Ladakh.
After the imposition of Central rule in J&K in 2018, the legislative powers of the J&K Assembly were vested with the Parliament. Elections to the Assembly were held after 6 years last year.
The new J&K Assembly, in its first session after being constituted, passed a resolution seeking the restoration of statehood to the UT.
In those elections, the National Conference (NC) won 42, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 29, the Congress six, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) three, the Peoples Conference, the CPI-M, the Awami Ittehad Party, and the Aam Aadmi Party one each, while Independents won 6 seats out of 90 seats.
Five independents later joined the NC while the Congress, the CPI-M and the AAP are supporting the Omar Abdullah government from the outside.
Omar Abdullah carried the statehood restoration resolution passed by the assembly to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah and both have said that statehood would be restored to J&K at the appropriate time. Omar Abdullah has apparently decided to wait till the Centre fulfils its promise and not follow the path of confrontation with Delhi on this issue.
(IANS)
