The denial from the Congress was swift and pointed.
Countering the charge that Congress MPs did not dissent when a parliamentary panel pressed for charges on certain business transactions via UPI in August , Gaurav Gogoi, who attended the meeting, said there was “no specific proposal on UPI tax when they met the members of the Finance Committee”.
“The Parliament Standing Committee on Finance has not discussed the UPI tax proposal that the Modi government has recently announced. The Department of Finance did not have any specific proposal on UPI tax when they met the members of the Finance Committee,” Gaurav Gogoi, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, posted on X on Thursday morning. Two of the five Congress MPs – Gaurav Gogoi and Manish Tewari – are disputing the charge that they agreed to the Finance Committee’s proposal. This is false.
“Some claims suggest the change is due to foreign influence. NPCI has said industry estimates put the annual cost of operating UPI – servers, bandwidth, fraud prevention and bank technical support – at roughly Rs 20,000 crore a year. The Department of Financial Services separately told Parliament’s Standing Committee on Finance that the payments industry spends about Rs 20,700 crore annually on P2M transactions alone. Earlier reporting noted: Government functionary questions Rahul’s criticism of UPI charges, says Congress MPs in panel gave nod The government on Wednesday (September 16, 2026) questioned the rationale behind Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s criticism of the decision to levy a fee on UPI payments to merchants above ₹2,000 , saying a parliamentary standing committee had backed such a move and Congress members of the panel had supported it. Earlier reporting noted: Five Congress MPs including P Chidambaram, Manish Tewari, Gaurav Gogoi, Kishori Lal and K Gopinath were present on August 12 when the report was adopted, with no dissent recorded in the published minutes, the functionary said.
“Questions were raised on the need for MDR but the representatives of the government did not have any specific or satisfactory answers at that point,” the Congress MP said, alleging that the move helps the major American corporations and urged the Prime Minister to roll back the tax. “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, quantum, amount of fee to be charged, ceiling and exemption slabs etc,” Tewari said, terming it “unfortunate” that the government is using the proceedings of Parliamentary Standing Committees to score “brownie points”. India’s UPI policy decisions are made independently, with the clear goal of building a self-sustaining, inclusive, and affordable digital payments ecosystem,” the finance ministry said in a post on X. Earlier reporting noted: A senior government functionary said the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance had pressed for a tiered Merchant Discount Rate (MDR)/ revenue framework for Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and noted that it should be notified and operationalised without delay.
