Meeting with govt fails, ginners to continue strike

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 25

The state government’s meeting with striking cotton ginners ended this evening with none of their demands —VAT refund and reduction of the market fee — having been accepted.

Sushil Mittal, president of the Haryana Cotton Ginners Association, said after the meeting that their strike would continue and they would not purchase cotton from the farmers.

The meeting was presided over by Agriculture Minister OP Dhankar. The ginners earlier met Finance Minister Captain Abhimanyu in the morning.

Sources said while the government was non-committal about VAT refund, the minister offered to reduce the market fee from 4 per cent to 1.6 per cent if the ginners gave an undertaking to pay tax on the minimum 80 lakh quintals of cotton.

“How can we give such a guarantee when we are not being provided a level playing field vis-a-vis our counterparts in Rajasthan and Punjab?” asked Mittal while talking to The Tribune.

He alleged their members paid 4.2 per cent VAT on cotton but were not able to recover it fully as the government had exempted VAT on its byproducts cottonseeds and oilcakes.

Sources said the government wanted a minimum guarantee from the ginners because of previous records of evasion. Sources said during the past four years when a reduced rate of 1.6 per cent was in force, the collection of market fee from cotton dwindled from Rs36.53 crore in 2012-13 to Rs29.8 crore in 2013-14, Rs16.28 crore in 2014-15 and finally to Rs8.65 crore in 2015-16.