AP will lose Rs 25,000 cr per year

Amaravati: Andhra Pradesh alone will lose more than Rs 25,000 crore per year if the 15th Finance Commission takes 2011 Census as basis for distribution of funds and resources instead of 1971 Census, claims TDP. 

Party official spokesperson Lanka Dinakar, in a release on Tuesday said, this erosion of fund share does men  best performing states which reduced population rate and were contributing more taxes to the Centre were getting reduced share from the tax devolutions and schemes from the net Central fund.

As per the Terms of References (ToR) to the 15th Finance Commission, most of the welfare programmes will be designed by the Union government with its discretion, thus tying the hands of the states. “This is because they (Centre) wants to create an impression that all welfare programmes in the country are being executed by the Union government only,” he said.

He said state governments would lose the freedom and autonomy in designing welfare schemes per their specific needs. So far, state governments have freedom of introducing the welfare schemes with the revenue sources of their own as well as share of funds from the Central government from common pool.

This centralised tendency being encouraging by the Union government will adversely affect the true spirit of co-operative federalism as spelt out again and again by the NDA government, Dinakar pointed out. 

Already, Andhra Pradesh had incurred huge losses due to unscientific computations of the 14th Finance Commission by distributing united Andhra Pradesh revenues on population ratio, he added.

The 15th Finance Commission has been constituted under the chairmanship of N K Singh to distribute the Divisible Net Revenues (Net Central Funds ) of the Central government among the states in the country for the period of five years commencing from the financial year 2020-21 to 2024-25.