Shillong, Nov 26: The Meghalaya government on Tuesday urged the 14th Finance Commission to provide a special grant of Rs50,000 crore to enable the state meet its liabilities.
After an interaction with members of the commission led by its chairman Y V Reddy, Chief Minister dr. Mukul Sangma said, “We have sought an award of Rs50,000 crore including a pre-devolution of Rs35,000 crore to meet non-plan expenditures and infrastructural gap in the state.”
Chief minister Mukul Sangma told reporters after the first sitting of the commission that in the meeting with the Fourteen Finance Commission discussion was done to meet the state’s requirement in term of infrastructural and other development related issues.
Sangma also said that the government requires an amount of Rs1,986 crore for the state’s normalisation of 11,000 government posts.
Sangma said special areas that require specific award from the commission were also discussed with it to meet the state’s expenditure for creation of state disaster mitigation and management authority, and a state disaster management force.
“Implementation of the national food security scheme, liabilities of the state in pension scheme, establishment of courts besides the commitment made under the education sector and implementation of pay under University Grants Commission scale,” he said.
Stating that an exhaustive presentation on the state’s specific needs was presented, Sangma said, “We have also projected the various parameters reflecting the status of the state’s economy and the challenges the state has, the challenges which are unique special to the state of ours and common to the special category states of the north east.”
He also said that the state needed financial support of the commission in creating infrastructure in the newly-created four districts and to implement the state flagship programme Integrated Basin Development and Livelihood Programme.
Sangma also informed that Meghalaya has made special focus on the various challenges that are before the state in respect to infrastructural requirements, huge gap between the actual demand and capacity of the state to provide infrastructural sector and the need to actually support those sectors which are in sync with the state’s initiative to create livelihood opportunities for the people.
Sangma said the major challenges in respect of strengthening the internal security apparatus of the state which will be capable of meeting the challenges is one of the areas that have been highlighted with much more emphasis.
Reddy, who arrived in Shillong on a two-day meeting, will also interact on Wednesday with chief executive members of the three autonomous district councils, chief executive officers of municipal boards and leaders of various political parties in the state.
The 14th Finance Commission would recommend on division of taxes between the centre and the states for a five-year period from April 2015 to 2020.
The commission which will submit its report by October 31, 2014 to the central government would recommend policies governing grants-in-aid to states and other local bodies such as panchayati raj institutions.(SP News)
