IT and Industry Minister KT Rama Rao demanded on Tuesday that the union government remove the five percent Goods and Services Tax (GST) levied on handlooms.
He claimed that the BJP government at the Centre was the first to impose GST on the handloom sector. Mahatma Gandhi launched the Swadeshi Agitation by urging people to boycott foreign clothing.
However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is also from Gujarat, imposed a 5% GST on handloom products for the first time in the country’s history. Rama Rao stated that the weaving community was suffering as a result of the union government’s decision and that the tax should be repealed.
Speaking after introducing a statue of freedom fighter Konda Laxman Bapuji near Manair river in Sircilla town on the occasion of the latter’s 107th birth anniversary, Rama Rao stated that the State government had been requesting for the last eight years the sanctioning of a Mega Textile Park and an Indian Institute of Handlooms Technology to the State. However, no response was received from the Centre.
The Centre was also refusing to grant national status to the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project and to extend support to the Palamuru-Rangareddy Lift Irrigation Scheme, he said, adding that while Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao had sanctioned one medical college in each of Telangana’s 33 districts, the Prime Minister had failed to sanction even a single Navodaya school.
Bandi Sanjay Kumar, BJP state president, and local MP, also failed to secure funding for a single educational institution in the Karimnagar Parliament constituency, he said, adding that BJP leaders had also failed to secure funds for the development of the Vemulawada temple.
Except for provoking the public, particularly the youth, in the name of religion, the BJP had done nothing for the country’s development, he said, urging people not to be carried away by provocative statements made by saffron party leaders for political gain. He added that all sections of the people, from farmers and toddy tappers to weavers, should compare and debate the development brought forward by the Chief Minister versus that claimed by the Prime Minister.
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