Ashrita Prasad Kotha

Of the total of 1,75,701 candidates who wrote the examination, less than 37 per cent were women, a minor improvement from just over 34 per cent in the previous edition. The qualifying percentage was almost identical for male and female candidates (65.92 per cent). This is a drop from the pass percentage for the 20th edition of AIBE (69.21 per cent), when female candidates recorded a pass percentage of 71 per cent as opposed to 66 per cent for male candidates.

As part of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) reforms that have been implemented in the country, a new levy called the GST Compensation Cess has been introduced to make good apprehended losses to States in the first five years of GST implementation. The Cess has been introduced through the GST (Compensation to States) Act, 2017 and is levied on inter- and intra-State supply of notified goods such as aerated drinks, coal, tobacco, automobiles and the ambiguous category of ‘other supplies’.

Successive Union governments have been imposing cess, the most recent being Swachh Bharat cess, Krishi Kalyan cess and infrastructure cess. When the Krishi Kalyan and infrastructure cess were announced in the Finance Bill, 2016, finance ministry officials said these would be phased out once the good and services tax (GST) was implemented. One hoped with the advent of GST, the multitude of indirect taxes would be subsumed. But that seems far from happening.