CHENNAI: The State government and all political parties have been critical of certain terms of reference (ToR) of 15th Finance Commission and they conveyed this to the delegation led by Commission’s chairman NK Singh during discussions held for the last two days.
However, Singh on Thursday clarified that the Commission had no say in the ToR given to them, but it would be neutral in its approach to the issues raised by the State governments.
“Between demands of the Centre and States, the commission will be impartial is in its approach,” Singh told.
Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami has expressed serious concern over the ToR relating to control of expenditure on government’s populist programmes. “Populist is a subjective term which has a very fine line of differences from popular schemes.
Tamil Nadu has a number of welfare schemes designed with specific socio-economic objective and cannot be termed ‘populist,’’’ he said.