The next meeting of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council will be held in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. This is for the first time the meeting will be held in the Southern State.

Announcing this decision at the end of the two-day long 47th GST Council meeting in Chandigarh, Union Finance Minister and GST Council Chairperson Nirmala Sitharaman said the 48th GST Council meeting will be held in Madurai in the first week of August this year.

According to the data available on the GST Council website and the PIB, majority of its meetings were held in the national capital since its first meeting in September 2016.

Besides New Delhi, Sri Nagar, Chandigarh, Udaipur, Lucknow, Panaji, Hyderabad and Guwahati have hosted the meetings so far.

Data also show that the Council met virtually for eleven times so far and, notably, it’s 33th meeting was held in a hybrid mode in February 2019. Majority of these virtual meetings were held in 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Stalin thanks FM

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin has thanked the Finance Minister for choosing Madurai as the venue for the next GST meeting. Taking to Twitter, Stalin said: “I thank Hon’ble Union Finance Minister @nsitharaman for accepting our invitation and agreeing to have the next #GSTCouncilMeet at Madurai. On behalf of the Temple City and its people, we warmly welcome the Hon’ble Union Ministers, Hon’ble State Ministers and senior officials!”

48th GST Council meeting

Since the current compensation mechanism ends on June 30, 2022 and no decision was taken on the contentious issue at the Chandigarh meeting, the next GST Council meeting assumes significance as the States are hopeful of a breakthrough.

Besides, the ensuing GST Council meet in Madurai is expected to take a final call on GST rates on casino, online gaming and some others, as in the latest meet the Council directed the Group of Ministers (GoM) to submit revised report at the earliest.

“The Council directed the Group of Ministers on Casino, Race Course and Online Gaming re-examine the issues in its terms of reference based on further inputs from States and submit its report within a short duration,” a PIB release said on Wednesday.

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