Akali-BJP panel to take up taxation with Badals
Tuesday, 11/11/2014
http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
CHANDIGARH: The six-member SAD-BJP course correction committee, which met on Monday, decided to meet Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, deputy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal and state BJP unit chief Kamal Sharma to resolve the issue of taxation collection from traders and industrialists.
Top officials of the taxation and industries department explained the tax system to the committee, after which the panel decided that the matter pertained to the state top brass.
The committee comprising senior SAD leaders Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, Balwinder Singh Bhunder and Ranjit Singh Brahmpura, and BJP leaders Ashwani Sharma, Narottam Dev Ratti and Rajinder Bhandari was formed after a report by BJP leader Balramji Dass Tandon, (who later became Chhattisgarh governor) on course correction by the SAD-BJP government after the coalition’s below-par performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
The Tandon committee, in its report submitted in August, concluded that the issues that led to the poor poll show were: the drug menace; lack of clarity on property tax; special favours to farmers at the cost of trade and industry; rising prices of sand and gravel; the Akali halqa in-charge system, over-dependence on bureaucracy, and too many changes in the taxation system.
The committee would also meet traders and industrialists in Ludhiana, Mandi Gobindgarh and other parts of the state.
