Hyderabad: All these days as the agitation on special status for AP grew, the Central government and its finance minister Arun Jaitley have been saying that the 14th Finance Commission has recommended not giving special category status to any state, and that is why it is unable to give special status to Andhra Pradesh.
But Union planning minister Rao Indrajit Singh said in a written reply to a query by member of parliament C.M. Ramesh, that the 14th Finance Commission did not recommended not giving special category status to any state.
The former minister wrote that the 14th Finance Commission did not recommend separately on special status. He said the 14th Finance Commission has only removed the differences between special status states and others in sharing of tax devolutions.
The special status issue also came up in the Rajya Sabha on Friday when former Union minister Y. Sujana Chowdary was giving his statement on his resignation from the Un-ion Cabinet. Mr Chowdary said the present Rajya Sabha Chairman, M. Venkaiah Naidu, who was in the Opposition at the time the state of Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated, had demanded special status for the rump state of AP for 10 years, in this very House.
Union minister Piyush Goel piped up and said it is not good to criticise the Rajya Sabha Chairman. The Trinamul’s Sukhendurai Chowdary pointed out that the TD member was not making any allegations against the Chair, and he has the right to quote a statement made by Mr Venkaiah Naidu in the past.
Mr Chowdary too said later that he was not making any allegations; he was just reminding the House about the statement made by the Chairman.
