As Congress leader Rahul Gandhi targeted the Centre over the move to impose fees on UPI transactions above Rs 2,000, a contradiction has emerged. Five
Congress MPs, including former Finance Minister P Chidambaram and former Union Minister Manish Tewari, backed a tiered Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) and revenue framework for UPI in a Parliamentary Standing Committee report adopted this year, according to an IANS report. The Parliamentary report called for the framework to be notified and operationalised without delay, stressing that a sustainable revenue mechanism was necessary to reduce the strain on the government exchequer. The five MPs, Chidambaram, Tewari, Gaurav Gogoi, Kishori Lal and K Gopinath, were members of the committee and were present when the report was adopted on August 12, with no dissent recorded in the published minutes.
What did the committee discuss?
According to the committee, "establishing a viable revenue mechanism is critical to ensuring that the UPI ecosystem achieves financial sustainability without perpetually straining the Government exchequer".
The Committee recommended that while the proposed three-year multi-year scheme and cashback components are necessary to democratise digital payments in untapped Tier 3-6 cities, the Department of Financial Services must concurrently explore a self-reliant, tiered revenue model.
The Committee also noted that, in pursuance of their earlier recommendations emphasising the imperative of a viable revenue model, legislative enabling provisions for a tiered MDR structure have been brought forward.
Congress leaders deny backing MDR
However, Congress leaders Gaurav Gogoi and Manish Tewari have denied backing the MDR structure.
"The Parliament Standing Committee on Finance has not discussed the UPI tax proposal that the Modi government has recently announced," Gogoi asserted.
"It is unfortunate that proceedings of Parliamentary Standing Committees that are supposed to be privileged are now sought to be used by the government to score brownie points. My colleague @GauravGogoiAsm is correct no specific proposal qua the recent Merchant Discount Rate -MDR to be levied on UPI transactions from October 15 th 2026 was ever brought before the Parliamentary standing of Finance- rate, quantam , amount of fee to be charged, ceiling and exemption slabs etc," Tewari wrote in a post on X.
On Wednesday, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) leaders rejected Rahul Gandhi's concerns over UPI charges and his allegation that the decision was taken under pressure from the United States, calling the claim baseless and defending the Union government's move.
