Claims, arrears part of memorandum to PM
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Chennai: Tamil Nadu has grants and reimbursements pending for more than Rs 10,000 crore from the Union government since 2014. Another Rs 4,000 crore announced in the previous Union budgets are yet to be credited to the state government exchequer by various Central government departments, a top TN official said.
A major part of such claims and pending arrears were submitted to Prime minister Narendra Modi by Chief Minister Jayalalithaa in a memorandum, but there are more grey areas.
Education, health, rural administration and civic administration are the major departments that are now facing financial crunch and the Centre’s delay in releasing funds is only adding to the existing woes, the official said.
According to a highly placed official, Tamil Nadu’s budget revenue receipts accounts for 78 per cent through its own revenue resources including non tax revenue of which a major chunk of Rs 29,000 crore comes from liquor sales. The state heavily depends for about 22 per cent from the Centre through the share in central tax and grants. When it comes to central sales tax compensation a sum of Rs 8,590.56 crore is pending from the Centre since 2013, the official said.
As many as 12 schemes have been de-linked from central assistance including modernisation of police, backward regions grant fund, hill areas development programme and western ghats development programme and this will stop the state to think working on these programmes, the official added.
According to official data, an alarming Rs 1,500 crore arrears under textile upgradation funding scheme pending for 3067 entrepreneurs in Tamil Nadu. In case of funds promised under state disaster response funding a total of Rs 632.72 crore pending and the state to prevent flooding completed five flood protection works after centre approved, but now there is a balance of Rs 342.94 crore pending from the union finance ministry.
Worse is the situation in education sector as the Centre introduced the Right To Education Act and 1.40 lakh free admissions were obtained from private schools (from 2013 to 2015) but the Centre has stopped releasing grants, However the state went ahead and paid the private schools to a tune of about Rs 97.05 crore and this amount is pending from the centre. Similarly scholarships for SC students to a sum of Rs 626 crore was also pending.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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