April 1 deadline for GST rollout seems challenging: Jayant Sinha

New Delhi: Amid ongoing political turbulence, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha Wednesday said that meeting April 1 deadline for GST rollout seems to be "challenging."

"Legislative side is complicated because you need two-third majority in the Rajya Sabha, you need 50 percent of states to pass it and then we have to get GST Bill to be passed...So there is lot of heavy lifting to done on legislative side which makes this challenging in terms of April 1, 2016," Sinha said.

The Constitutional Amendment Bill to roll out Goods and Services Tax is stuck in the Rajya Sabha due to stiff opposition by the Congress party and might be delayed further because of the tough stance taken by the main opposition party over the National Herald case issue.

"We could implement GST from April 1, 2016 from administrative point of view," he said while talking to a global audience on YouTube on India's reforms agenda.

"If indeed the legislation gets passed across the Centre and states then there is no reason why we cannot implement in the year at any point, this is after all a transaction tax and then when it kicks in, it will kick in on all of those transactions," he said.

"We will keep pushing as far as GST is concerned. It will happen sooner rather than later," he added.

He also said that the present regime is pro-poor and pro-market.

The philosophy of Narendra Modi-led government is minimum government and maximum governance, he said, adding the government believes in cooperative federalism.