NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 6 (NEPS): Nagaland Minister for National Highways and Mechanical Engineering, Nuklutoshi has drawn the attention of Union Finance Minister on the “acute resource constraints” faced by State due to the “alteration of funding pattern to Nagaland since 1990.”
Attending the Pre-Budget Meeting with Arun Jaitley, Union Finance Minister at Hotel Shangri-la, Ashoka Road on Saturday, Nuklutoshi, who was attending on behalf of the Chief Minister TR Zeliang, informed the Ministry that Nagaland was perhaps the only State which was created out of a “political agreement.”
“The agreement provided special provisions with respect to governance and funding for the State,” Nuklutoshi reminded. He however said the change in the funding pattern to Nagaland since 1990 was not in accordance to the political agreement.
Drawing further the attention of the Ministry, Nuklutoshi said Nagaland, Jammu & Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh and some States of the Northeastern region should be treated more special than the other Special Category States. The Nagaland Minister also said that without taking into consideration the Special Status of Nagaland, the 13th Finance Commission had recommended normative funding to all the State restricting salary expenditure to 35% of the total revenue expenditure, net of Interest Payment and pension.
“If we are to go on the basis of the 13thFinance Commission recommendations, we would have to terminate the services of about 45,000 government employees, which is not possible,” he pointed out.
Although the Government of India had created the special window of Special Central Assistance (untied) to cover the BCR Gap, the distribution of the fund was neither proportionate to the BCR Gap of the State nor sufficient, Nuklutoshi asserted.
Because of this, he explained, the Nagaland State, at the close 13th Finance Commission period, ended up with a huge deficit of Rs 1542 crore.
The Minister, however, disclosed that the 14th Finance Commission understood the problem faced by the State and “their recommendations are found to be more realistic as compared with the previous Finance Commissions.”
“However, the backlog deficit created during the 13th Finance Commission period is so huge that even the award of the 14th Finance Commission is not sufficient to cover the pending deficit of the State,” he informed the Ministry. He further requested the Government of India to give a one-time grant to waive the deficit to enable the state to focus on developmental activities.
Nuklutoshi attended the Pre-Budget meeting with Kikheto Sema, Finance Secretary to Nagaland Government.
