'UPI tax proposal not discussed': Congress MPs on House panel deny backing MDR

Congress MP Manish Tewari called out the government for allegedly using "proceedings of Parliamentary Standing Committees to score brownie points".

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.

While Gogoi clarified that the panel did not discuss the "UPI tax proposal", Tewari called out the government for allegedly using the "proceedings of Parliamentary Standing Committees to score brownie points".

"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".

According to the government functionary, 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.