The Lok Sabha has taken up the Finance Bill, 2017 for discussion post -lunch. The bill was moved by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the House. The bill seeks to give effect to the financial proposals of the Central Government for the financial year 2017-18.<br/><br/>Initiating the debate, Deepender Singh Hooda of Congress demanded the government to cut the duties on petrol and diesel by at least five rupees. He said, the rate of crude oil in the International market has come down and the government has saved around 2 lakh core rupees due to this and its benefit should be passed on to the consumers.<br/><br/>He alleged that during UPA rule the investment proposals was to the tune of over 17 lakh crore rupees which have now come down to 3.93 lakh crore rupees in 2016. He also urged the government to waive off farm loans and increase the Minimum Support Price (MSP) of produce of farmers. Rakesh Singh of BJP termed the Union Budget as historic and said that it is in the interest of the nation.<br/><br/>He said, once the GST is implemented the country's tax net will expand and states will also be benefitted from the new tax regime. He said, this year the country's food-grain production is estimated at 27.2 crore tonnes which will be a record. Mr Singh also rejected the opposition allegations of slowing down of GDP due to demonetisation and said, the country's GDP is 7 per cent.<br/><br/>Earlier, N K Premachandran of RSP opposed the inclusion of various proposals other than tax proposals in the Finance Bill. He demanded the government to bring separate legislations except the tax proposals. Mr Jaitley said, there is no violation of rules as these provisions are incidental to the tax provisions and therefore amendments to various Acts have been included in the Finance Bill. Speaker Sumitra Mahajan also said, if the provisions are incidental to the tax proposals they may be included in the bill.