Hasmukh Adhia

Hasmukh Adhia (born 3November 1958) is a retired 1981 batch IAS officer of Gujarat cadre who served as the Finance Secretary and Revenue Secretary of India. He is considered as one of the key persons behind the architecture and roll-out of the Goods and Services Tax & Demonetization in India announced in 2016. He is the present Chairman of the boards of State public sector undertakings Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Limited (GACL) (GACL) and Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation Ltd(GMDC), standing committee of Pandit Deendayal Energy University, Gandhinagar and former Chairman of GIFT City, Non Executive Chairman of Bank of Baroda.

Education Hasmukh Adhia is a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in yoga from the Swami Vivekanand Yoga University in Bangalore, He also has Master of Commerce and Bachelor Commerce degrees from Gujarat University.

Career

Ahead of his retirement, Adhia was praised by Minister of Finance Arun Jaitley, who called him "highly competent, disciplined, no-nonsense civil servant [...] with impeccable integrity," and said that Adhia refused important post-retirement assignment from the government and instead intended to focus on spirituality and caring for his son.

During his tenure as Revenue Secretary, Adhia was regarded as one of the most powerful bureaucrats in India.

Controversies Adhia is considered one of the key persons behind the architecture and roll-out of the controversial Goods and Service Tax in India. He is also considered to be privy to another major controversial move of demonetisation of Rs500 and Rs.1000 Currency notes which forced the retirement of 86percent of cash in circulation in India on 8November 2016.

He was also accused of diluting graft charges against congress leader like Sonia Gandhi, P.Chidambaram. Hasmukh Adhia was accused of interfering and preventing promotion of Enforcement Directorate Joint Director Rajeshwar Singh. BJP Leader Subramaniam Swamy filed a petition in Supreme Court in favour of Rajeshwar Singh.

Hasmukh Adhia was considered to be one of the key persons in bringing controversial LTCG tax for Stocks without any indexation benefits. This move was considered to be illogical and became largely unpopular in Indian Stock Market. This triggered Foreign Investors to pull out investment from Indian Stock Market and triggered a Market Crash on 2 February 2018, a day after the announcement was made.

Hasmukh Adhia along with Indian Finance minister Arun Jaitley became highly unpopular after piling up taxes and cess on Indian Salaried Class instead of raising the tax slab. There was an outrage among salaried class when he was quoted saying "Why shouldn’t we tax a class that is investing in markets".

Books