J&K to have 5 check, toll posts

KT NEWS SERVICE SRINAGAR, Feb 15: Sales Tax authorities would soon find themselves pushed to the wall when Punjab government would complete its project to have as many as five access roads to J&K.

This will make Lakhanpur - gateway to J&K - lose its sheen and help tax-evaders to try their luck.

Coupled with the problems that it is facing in detecting tax evaders and smugglers who get their consignments through air cargo and railways, the ST authorities are heading for a mess in near future.

This is despite the government has collected Rs.

552 Cr as ST, of which Rs.

are from Kashmir province.

Admitted Muzaffar Hussain Beig: "We were concentrating on the Lakhanpur check post and we were working overtime to make the system scientific and speedy.

Now we will have to have five check posts".

The issue of ST and the department's failure to supress unlisted items creeping in illegally was raised by Zahoor Ahmad, President of the newly floated Kashmir Electronics Association in a pre-budget consultative meeting with Muzaffar Hussain Beig.

"We pay a lot of tax but why should we pay tax when certain elements in the trade are managing import of a lot of material without listing it anywhere", Zahoor said adding that "the electronics dealers in Lal Chowk area selling hundreds of items daily that come either through speed post, or through air cargo".

He told the minister that it was the cooperation of his union that ST recently caught hold of four such consignments.

This made Beig furious.

"What kind of joker department are you heading? Sharafat Ka Matlab Yeh Nahin Hai Ki You will behave like a sheep", Beig told ST Commissioner Feroz Ahmad.

But when the ST authorities started explaining their positions, Finance Minister felt convinced.

"We do have a man posted at the airport but the authorities do not permit him in and when the passengers with their luggage move out it is physically impractical to catch each one of them and frisk their belongings", ST Commissioner said.

In case of Speed Post, Feroz said that ST presence has forced the GPO to make distributions during late evening hours and the ST lacks an authority to check the GPO vehicle that roams around during late hours.

Feroz said that from Sopore their teams have recovered ST worth seven crore rupees after a series of raids.

As for penalty, he said it has increased by 836 percent over the last year.

Admitting that it was physically impossible to frisk every passenger who comes out of railway terminal at Jammu, Special Secretary Khazir Mohammed Wani said the effective ST presence at the railhead has already witnessed an abnormal growth of ST of the order of 65 percent.

"The mechanism is being developed further", he assured the traders.

ST department assured that it would take care of fake CST GST number holders.

However, it is interesting to mention here that the law does not prevent any non-registered trader - who lacks a physical presence in the market by way a shop - to have such numbers and work.

KCCI boycott 'unfortunate' KT NEWS SERVICE SRINAGAR, Feb 15: Finance Minster Muzaffar Hussain Beig said the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) boycotted the pre-budget meeting for "political reasons" but this will not affect government policy and the commitments made so far.

"Many of them were in the meeting that we had in Jammu with their counterparts.

We did agree to certain suggestions and we stand committed to that", Beig said in his pre-budget meeting in Srinagar.

"Their boycott is unfortunate but it will have no major impact", he added.

KMA Association, WMD Association, Mini-bus transporters association and Kashmir Electronics Dealers Association attended Beig's pre-budget related meeting.

Minister rejected the KCCI argument that since budget stands approved by the cabinet there is no room for consultation.

"This is their ignorance.

The fact is that we talked about broad concepts of the sectoral allocations not what concessions we are giving or what taxes we are leving.

The fact is that budget proposals are yet to be printed and the budget speech yet to be written", he said.

Speaker to employees Maintain discipline in govt deptts KT NEWS SERVICE JAMMU, Feb 15: Speaker Legislative Assembly, Tara Chand has exhorted upon the employees to maintain discipline in government departments and work with zeal, dedication and honesty to serve the ruralities with more vigour.

He was speaking at a function organized by the Government Employees' Form of Khour block in village Sehar in Akhnoor tehsil.

A large number of government employees and local people participated.

The speaker asked the employees to involve the local people while implementing various development schemes so that the real benefit of the schemes percolate down to the needy.

He said that there should be no compromise with the quality control.

Rural masses have several expectations from the employees and it becomes their duty to full-fill their aspirations by serving them selflessly.

He emphasized upon the teaching community to prepare the students to compete at national and international levels so that they would be able to take the challenges faced by the country.

Only teachers can shape the future of the students by their hard work, he asserted.

The students should be given moral and social education besides formal education which builds the inner character of the students that inspires them to serve the country as well as society selflessly.

Tara Chand appealed the people to maintain unity, integrity and communal harmony which is the tradition of our country.

He said that they should not fall in false propaganda of vested interests.

He also assured that there would be no discrimination on the basis of caste, creed and equal development scenario must be maintained, he added.

He asked them to cooperate with the administration in implementing various developmental schemes.

On the issue of employment to local youth, he said that the state government has recently passed a resolution for reconsidering of MoU signed with the Centre government.

He hoped that the Centre government would take it sympathetically and pave way for making recruitment for various posts lying vacant in the state, he added.

Responding to the various demands put forth by the employees, the speaker assured that genuine demands would be looked into sympathetically and resolved at the earliest.

Earlier he also performed the 'Bhoomi Poojan' of a tube well at village Indri in Khour block.

This was a long pending demand of the locals.

The employees thanked the speaker for listening to their demands patiently and said that this would boost their morale.

They assured him that they will work with utmost vigour and will not give any chance of complaint by the people.

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