West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra has been named the new chairman of the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers on Goods and Services Tax (GST). He will succeed Kerala Finance Minister KM Mani who had to resign in November over corruption charges. Mitra, an economist who for long was Secretary General of industry association FICCI before joining politics in 2011 and becoming a minister in the TMC government in West Bengal, was elected at the meeting of state finance ministers that was also attended by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

Mitra will be the second chairman of the panel, which is tasked with framing rules for roll out of the ambitious GST regime, which will subsume all indirect taxes and create one national market, from West Bengal. Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said Mitra was elected head of the Committee at the meeting of state finance ministers.

The head of the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers has always been from an opposition ruled state.

Did You Know???

• Ministry of Finance concerns itself with taxation, financial legislation, financial institutions, capital markets, centre and state finances, and the Union Budget.
• R. K. Shanmukham Chetty was the first Finance Minister of independent India. He presented the first budget of independent India on November 26, 1947
• A principal responsibility of this Department of Economic Affairs is the preparation of the Union Budget annually (excluding the Railway Budget).