NEW DELHI: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said he is not in favour of special status and special financial packages doled out to states and said this is against fiscal federalism and will make India ‘confederation of states’.
“The danger of giving special packages and special status is that it could encourage other economically weaker states like Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Bihar to demand the same… This will make India confederation of states” Jaitley said while addressing the CII AGM here.
Jaitley said he is in favour of going along with “recommendation of Finance commission on the subject,”
Jaitley was referring to the provision in the Congress manifesto released on April 2, which had promised Special Category Status (SCS) to Andhra Pradesh.
On Tuesday also Jaitley had hit back on TDP chief and Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu’s stand on SCS.
“We had offered the special package to which Chandrababu Naidu had agreed, he had written a letter of thanks to me, and he passed a resolution of thanks in the Assembly. The amount given was exactly equivalent to what would have been given under the SCS. He then took a U-turn,” Jaitley had said on Tuesday.
The finance minister also slammed the critics of electoral bonds and called the debate an ill-informed one. “I regret that the whole debate on electoral bonds is an ill-informed one. The earlier system was opaque who the donor was, who the intermediary was, who the political party benefitting was, none of these was known. Every stage was non-transparent. While the Election Commission has succeeded in many areas, they haven't been able to control cash. Electoral bonds are a reasonably transparent step,” he said.