NITI Aayog rejects state’s demand for special status
CENTRE NO HC had directed centre to reconsider Rajasthan plea for financial grant to resolve drinking water crisis, NITI Aayog says state does not fulfil criteria for special status
The National Institute for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) has turned down Rajasthan’s request for a special status for financial aid to counter drinking water crisis in the state. The NITI Aayog found the state’s demand unjustified.
The Rajasthan high court, while hearing a PIL on January 10, ordered the central government to consider granting special status to Rajasthan in view of drinking water crisis.
The NITI Aayog, in compliance to the court order, after considering over granting the special status to Rajasthan on March 7 informed the union ministry of drinking water and sanitation granting special status to Rajasthan was not justified.
HT has a copy of the letter in which director of the Aayog (Finance Resource Division) Ajay Kumar Nema has written that according to the criteria of National Development Council, states with hilly and difficult terof rain, low population density, strategic location along the international borders, economic and infrastructure backwardness, non viable of state finance are granted the special status.
The proposal for Rajasthan had already been denied by the erstwhile Planning Commission, he wrote. Nema further wrote so far as the issue of states affected by arsenic and fluoride contaminated drinking water, it is the part of state government and ministry of drinking water and sanitation.
The union government, on the recommendation by NITI Aayog, sanctioned ₹1,000 corers to the states for drinking water in the financial year of 2015-16 and Rajasthan had the largest share ₹431 corers. Of the sanctioned amount, ₹100 corer were allotted for last mile connectivity and the remaining for providing clean drinking water to villages hit by fluoride contamination.
According to the Aayog, the 14th Finance Commission in its recommendations has not made any distinction between general category states and special category states in the horizontal distribution of shareable taxes among the states.
In fact, the special needs of states have been addressed while deciding the horizontal distribution of resources for states. The Rajasthan government in January 2012 forwarded the proposal for special status for financial aid to the central government but at that time too the Planning Commission rejected it.
The then deputy chairman of the commission on March 7, 2013, wrote a letter to the Rajasthan CM informing that National Development Council had set criteria to grant the special status to states and Rajasthan did not meet the criteria.