Congress MPs Gaurav Gogoi and Manish Tewari have refuted the claim that the decision to levy a fee on UPI payments was supported by them as members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance.
Five Congress MPs, including P Chidambaram, Manish Tewari, Gaurav Gogoi, Kishori Lal and K Gopinath were present on August 12 when the report was adopted and no dissent was recorded in the published minutes, according to the government functionary. Backing his party colleague, Tewari said there was no specific proposal on levying MDR on UPI transactions from October 15. Govt functionary says Chidambaram, 4 other Congress MPs backed UPI revenue framework After Congress MP Rahul Gandhi trained his guns at the Modi government, demanding an immediate rollback of the new UPI fee rule, the Centre hit back by citing a parliamentary panel’s recommendation on a tiered revenue framework, reportedly backed by five Congress MPs, including former finance minister P Chidambaram. Earlier reporting noted: According to news agency PTI, the functionary said five Congress MPs — P Chidambaram, Manish Tewari, Gaurav Gogoi, Kishori Lal and K Gopinath — were present when the panel adopted its report on August 12.
Tewari called out the government for allegedly using the “proceedings of Parliamentary Standing Committees to score brownie points” While Gogoi clarified that the panel did not discuss the “UPI tax proposal”. “The Department of Finance did not have any specific proposal on UPI tax when they met the members of the Finance Committee,” said Gogoi hours after a senior government functionary reportedly claimed the Parliamentary panel had pushed for a tiered Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) framework for Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Gogoi said that questions were raised on the need for MDR, but the “representatives of the government did not have any specific or satisfactory answers at that point”. He asserted that no proposal “was ever brought before the Parliamentary standing of Finance- rate, quantam, amount of fee to be charged, ceiling and exemption slabs etc”. “Why is Rahul Gandhi opposing something his own MPs including former finance minister P Chidambaram and former minister in the UPA government Manish Tewari supported within the parliamentary panel,” news agency PTI quote him as saying. Reacting to the government’s decision to levy a fee on UPI payments above ₹ 2,000 to merchants, Gandhi alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided to “prostrate” before US President Donald Trump and give a huge amount of money to America. Earlier reporting noted: A senior government functionary said the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance had recommended introducing a tiered Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) for UPI transactions and called for the framework to be implemented without delay.
Earlier reporting noted: ‘Why is Rahul opposing?
