HYDERABAD: With a slogan that ‘performing States should not be denied funds’, the State government will spearhead a campaign seeking more funds from the Centre. State finance officials recently indicated the same to the Fifteenth Finance Commission authorities in Delhi. The contention of Telangana is that there are only 6-7 top performing States in the country and they are receiving less Central funds. “The Centre is contributing 70 to 80 per cent of the Budget of Bihar, whose Budget size is nearly 1.7 lakh crore higher than TS. Whereas, the same Centre contributes only 20 per cent to TS’ budgeted expenditure,” a finance department official explained.
“The 14th Finance Commission preferred giving more funds to the backward and non-performing States. Thus, the States which failed to collect taxes properly got more funds from the Centre, whereas the States like TS which were performing well were denied funds,” an official explained.
“We want the 15th Finance Commission to rectify this and give more funds to the TS,” an official said.
The officials said that the TS was contributing around Rs 50,000 crore annually to the Centre and in turn the TS was getting only half of the amount. Even though, the Centre increased the tax devolution to the States from 30 per cent to 42 per cent, the TS’ net hike in Central revenues is just Rs 1,000 crore. But, after remaking the Centrally sponsored scheme from 80:20 ratio, the TS actually suffered revenue losses,” the official sources explained.
The TS was somewhat better, the net revenue of the Tamil Nadu from the Centre was slipped into negative after the reorganisation of Centrally Sponsored Scheme, the official sources said.“Let the Centre ask States like Bihar to perform well instead of making performing States like TS suffer,” the official pointed out. There were only six to seven performing States in the country which include Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana and others, the official sources said.