Telangana skips Finance Ministers' conference again

The Telangana Government on Monday skipped the second conference of finance ministers being held in Vijayawada over the recommendations of the 15th Finance Commission.

Earlier, Telangana had skipped the first conference of finance ministers of the southern states, held in April. Finance Ministers of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Mizoram, Sikkim, and Odisha also didn’t turn up at the conference.

Hosted by Andhra Pradesh, the Finance ministers from 11 states with common ideology on Fiscal Federalism were invited for the meeting.

Ministers from Pondicherry, Delhi, Kerala, Punjab, and West Bengal attended the meeting.

The 15th Finance Commission, set-up in November 2017, recognized population as an important criterion for distribution of taxes and planned to make recommendations for the five-year period, which begins in 2020 using the data from the 2011 census.

Raising concern regarding the population-based formula for tax sharing between the Centre and states, the southern states wanted the recommendations to be based on the 1971 census data.