The Supreme Court verdict does not entail any changes ‘in any way’ to the functioning of the GST regime and the institutional mechanism for its operation, the Finance Ministry asserted on Thursday, even as some States welcomed the decision for clearly enunciating and safeguarding their rights.
Terming the GST Council ‘the finest example of collaborative and cooperative federalism’, the Finance Ministry said that the apex court had ‘only elaborated’ on its functional mechanism in its observations.
“This judgment does not in any way lay down anything new in so far as the GST institutional mechanism is concerned, does not have any bearing on the way GST has been functioning in India, nor lays down anything fundamentally different to the existing framework of GST,” it noted, seeking to quell anxiety about the future of the indirect tax system introduced on July 1, 2017.
