The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) chief ministers are believed to gave formed a pressure group to safeguard their states? interests.
After the issue of the National Mineral Policy (NMP), these chief ministers have taken up the Gadgil-Mukherjee formula with the Centre. The chief ministers of nine NDA-ruled states have formed a group to demand a revision of the formula. It may be recalled that central assistance to states is allocated by the Planning Commission as per the Gadgil-Mukherjee formula.
The chief ministers, who met in Delhi last week during the National Development Council meeting to pass a resolution to this effect, have submitted a joint memorandum to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demanding that central assistance to state Plans only be provided as normal central assistance (NCA). Provision for NCA in the 11th Plan should be raised to at least Rs 2 lakh crore, they feel.
Besides Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik, the other signatories were Narendra Modi (Gujarat) Vasundhara Raje (Rajasthan), Nitish Kumar (Bihar), Shivraj Singh Chauhan(Madhya Pradesh), Raman Singh (Chhattisgarh), Madhu Koda (Jharkhand), Prakash Singh Badal(Punjab) and BC Khanduri (Uttarakhand).
Opposing the concept of additional central assistance (ACA) and special central assistance (SCA), the chief ministers demanded that there be only two schemes, centrally sponsored scheme (CSS) and NCA. No scheme should be run, under the name of ACA/SCA, they said. Moreover, they demanded that there should be no matching state share in the CSS.
The fund flow through CSS should be minimised over a reasonable period. The CMs pointed out that the increasing tendency to foreclose a higher proportion of gross budgetary support for the central sector/CSS undercut the autonomy and flexibility of states to design projects to meet local needs. This must be reversed in conformity with the basic design of distribution of functions and powers in the constitutional framework, they added.
The ?Group of Nine (G-9)? has suggested that a committee co-chaired by the Plan panel deputy chairman and a senior chief minister of a state should be constituted with adequate representation to incorporate these recommendations in the 11th Plan.