Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma announced that the state government will table three ordinances as Bills in the upcoming session of the state assembly.
In a tweet on Tuesday, Sangma said the three Bills approved by his cabinet to be made into laws are:
a) To repeal the RajitLal University Act, 2011,
b) Meghalaya GST Act, 2017, and
c) Meghalaya Medical Council (Amendment) Bill, 2023.
It may be noted that the Rajitlal Institute of Technology & Health Sciences, commonly known as RITHS, was established in 2003. It was supposed to operate in partnership with several foreign universities.
The institute got the green signal to become a university from the Meghalaya government and the state assembly subsequently passed the RajitLal University Bill as the RajitLal University Act on September 15, 2011. However, due to a range of reasons, the legislation couldn’t get the governor’s assent until February 2020.
Finally, in July this year, the state cabinet approved the proposal to pass an ordinance to repeal the RajitLal University Act, 2011. At that time, Sangma had said, “From February 2020 till now, we have not seen any significant move being done by the university [towards operating as a full-fledged and functioning university].”
Justifying his government’s move, Sangma further said, “The Private University Commission that we have that regulates the private universities have also written to the said university several times asking for their current status, and no satisfactory reply has come from their end. Hence, after following due process, the cabinet has approved the proposal to pass an ordinance to repeal the Act.”
The Meghalaya Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017, was passed to make a provision for levies and collection of taxes on intrastate supply of goods or services or both by Meghalaya. The Sangma Government amended some of its provisions in June 2021 by issuing an ordinance (Meghalaya Goods and Service Tax (Amendment) Ordinance, 2021.
The new Bill has incorporated a few more changes since then according to the amendments made by the GST Council and will be presented before the autumn session of the state assembly to make it into law.
Talking to the media on Tuesday, the chief minister said, “Every state government has to amend the GST Act as per the amendments made by the GST Council.”
On the Meghalaya Medical Council (Amendment) Bill, 2023, Sangma said, “This was again an ordinance. If you recall, there were nomenclature changes and those have been made and the ordinance was passed a few weeks back, and now that again has been regularized.”
The autumn session of the Meghalaya state assembly will start on September 15.