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Finance minister T M Thomas Isaac to rally south FMs on biased fund allocation

The office has also sent letters of invite to the minsters on March 22.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Finance minister T.M. Thomas Isaac has called a meeting of Southern Indian finance ministers on April 10 to take a unified stand against the Centre’s direction to the 15th Finance Commission to use the 2011 Census as the base for evolving its resource sharing formula. Dr Isaac’s call coincides with Karnataka Chief Minister K. Siddaramaiah’s tweet for a joint resistance against the 15th Finance Commmission’s ‘terms of reference’. Dr Isaac had personally called the finance ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana. “The ministers were favourable to the idea,” a source in the finance minister's office said.

The office has also sent letters of invite to the minsters on March 22. No written confirmation has yet been received. Finance commissions since 1976 had used the 1971 Census as the base to work out how much of the Centre’s resources should go to each state and union territory. The use of the latest 2011 Census while working out the transfer, it is feared, would adversely affect the entitlements of South Indian states, all of which had commendably managed their population growth.

“It will be a big disincentive if less resources are transferred to states that had done well to keep population growth in control,” the source said. In North Indian states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, the decadal growth (from 2000 to 2011) has been over 20 per cent. As for Kerala, the decadal growth (2000-2011) of population in rural areas declined so drastically that it was a negative 25 per cent. Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu, too, have considerably low decadal growth when compared to North Indian states.

( Source : Deccan Chronicle. )
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