The chief minister only said at the meeting that Finance Minister Vajubhai Vala will hold a series of consultations, till November 30, with members of the committee of trade and industries to work out a formula and suggest an alternative to octroi.

Addressing the Thursday meeting, attended by office-bearers of various chambers of commerce & industry and representatives of trade and business from different parts of the state, Keshubhai Patel said the government was seized with the issue, but it would have to examine all relevant aspects before effecting any change in the existing octroi system.

In the past, the erstwhile Congress government had to reverse its decision of abolishing octroi, he said, adding that the present regime did not want to repeat the same mistake. ``We want to adopt such a system (to replace octroi) that other states are compelled to emulate the Gujarat model,'' Patel pointed out at the meeting.

Justifying the delay on the part of the BJP government in taking a decision on the octroi abolition issue, the chief minister said the government had sent a team of its officials to certain states to study the working of the system these states have introduced to replace octroi.

Intervening in the deliberations, Finance Minister Vajubhai Vala assured the trade and industries' representatives that the government was seriously considering the octroi abolition issue and that they should not cast aspersion on the government's sincere efforts.

After the meeting, a senior bureaucrat told Ahmedabad Newsline that there was little possibility of abolishing octroi from the state in the absence of ``genuine alternative'' to the present system. Citing an example, he said a bill seeking to replace octroi with entry tax had been introduced in the Assembly during the Amar Singh Chaudhary Government way back in 1986. But, the then government had to beat a retreat following a State-wide agitation by traders and industrialists against the bill. Meanwhile, Mayor Bharati Vyas has urged Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel to take all mayors of the State into confidence before deciding about abolishing octroi.

In a letter to the Chief Minister on Thursday, Vyas while pointing out that the all mayors of Gujarat did not favour abolishing octroi, said it should be abolished only after identifying alternative sources of revenue. A consensus was reached between all mayors at the recently concluded two-day conference of mayors in New Delhi that octroi should not be abolished without reservation. She has claimed that states, where octroi had been abolished, were planning to re-introduce the source of revenue.

Vyas said in Madhya Pradesh octroi abolition was a failure and the State Finance Commission was also not satisfied. She has requested that copies of reports made by teams of Gujarat, which have visited several cities to study the system, be made available to mayors for information.