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The Supreme Court bench composing of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud has stayed all proceedings pending before the Bombay and Delhi High Courts challenging the imposition of 12% levy of taxes under the GST. It had issued notices to all petitioners and has said that it will examine if all the matters should be heard by the Apex Court itself.
The Centre, which filed the transfer petition asked for a stay on all proceedings against the imposition of GST on sanitary napkins. The Delhi HC bench of Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C. Hari Shankar had asked the SC as to the reason why sanitary napkins, being a necessity still come under the purview of taxation under the GST while items like Bindi, sindoor and Kajal which are not as necessary for women as sanitary napkins are exempted from taxation by categorizing them under the label of necessity and also slammed the centre for non-inclusion of women in the GST council.
The petition before the Delhi HC was filed by Zamina Israr Khan, a PhD. Scholar in the Centre for African studies at JNU who argued that imposing such a high rate of tax is illegal and constitutional and has far reaching impact for the health of women who may find a disincentive in the high tax with regard to the usage of high quality sanitary napkins.
The centre on the other hand argued that non-imposition of tax on these sanitary napkins will provide zero input credit to the domestic manufacturers. Since there is no duty on imports, the lack of the credit will make the domestic producers weak in comparison to foreign sanitary napkin companies.
In the Bombay HC, a NGO called the NGO Shetty Women Welfare Foundation filed a petition arguing for lower rates on sanitary napkins. The Government argued that before the introduction of GST, the tax on the napkins was 13.68% .
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