NEW DELHI, October 11 — Chaired by the Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs and comprising state finance ministers, the 56th Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council meeting in New Delhi on Sunday approved targeted tax relief on health and term life insurance premiums alongside sharp rate reductions on critical oncology medications.
Acting on empirical recommendations submitted by the Group of Ministers (GoM) on rate rationalization, the Council endorsed exempting individual health insurance policies for senior citizens (up to ₹5 lakh sum insured) and pure micro-term life insurance plans from the prevailing 18 percent GST levy to expand social security penetration. Furthermore, GST rates on three frontline cancer immunotherapy drugs—Trastuzumab Deruxtecan, Osimertinib, and Durvalumab—were slashed from 12 percent to 5 percent.
To plug revenue leakage and dismantle fraudulent Input Tax Credit (ITC) syndicates, the Council mandated pan-India rollout of biometric-based Aadhaar authentication for suspicious new GST registrations and finalized operational rules to activate State Benches of the Goods and Services Tax Appellate Tribunal (GSTAT) by December 2026.
The constitutional architecture of the GST Council under Article 279A (inserted via the 101st Constitutional Amendment Act, 2016), weighted voting thresholds (Central Government holds 1/3rd weightage, States collectively hold 2/3rd weightage, with decisions requiring a 3/4th majority of weighted votes), the GST Compensation Cess mechanism, and GSTAT dispute resolution are core pillars across UPSC Civil Services (GS-II: Fiscal Federalism & GS-III: Indirect Taxation).