Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu has strongly criticized the Central governments’ decision to discontinue the Revenue Deficit Grant (RDG) to special category hill states.
Talking to media persons at Shimla, the CM said, “This would be remembered as ‘black day ‘in the history of Himachal Pradesh as the state had received nearly Rs 48,000 crore as RDG over the past five years under the 15th Finance Commission and was expecting nearly Rs 50,000 crore in the next cycle, and the state is going to lose huge amount now.”
The CM said, “I have been meeting the Finance Commission and the Finance Minister several times regarding uniformity in the RDG but had no inkling that it will be stopped completely.”
Terming the move as injustice to the state the CM said, “Article 275(1) of the Constitution provides for state-specific grants from the Union Government, also known as Revenue Deficit Grants (RDG); from 1952 up to the Fifteenth Finance Commission, these grants were regularly provided by the Centre to the states, however, for the first time, the 16th Finance Commission has discontinued this grant.”
“The Central government has also rejected the state demand to raise the borrowing limit from 3 percent to 4 percent, which will compound the financial problems of the state “, he added.
In a statement issued here, Sanjay Chauhan, State Secretary, CPM, said Himachal Pradesh was a revenue-deficit state facing a severe economic crisis. He alleged that the state had not been given any tangible support and that the revenue-deficit grants due under the 16th Finance Commission was neither clearly mentioned nor aligned with the state government’s demand.
CPM state Secretary Sanjay Chauhan has also criticized the decision of the Central government to stop RDG and said, “Despite the state suffering repeated natural disasters the Central government has not conceded the demand of giving disaster relief packages to the state to give relief to disaster affected people.”
