RANCHI: Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday, sought his intervention for the release of Goods and Services Tax (GST) compensation due to the states.
According to Soren, Jharkhand being a manufacturing and heavy industries based state receives less compensation and is thus bound to suffer losses in GST regime.
“Today I have written to Hon'ble @PMOIndia to convey our deep concerns with regard to hurdles in the payment of GST compensation by Central Govt to the States & have requested the PM to intervene & advise the @FinMinIndia to uphold the spirit of Cooperative Federalism in practice,” CM Soren tweeted.
The Chief Minister in his letter, further added that Jharkhand contributes a sum of nearly Rs 5000 crore from the mineral sector alone, and gets merely Rs 150 core in return as monthly compensation.
“And now we are being asked to borrow at the time when the state is hard-pressed to pay salaries to government servants. Poor people of this state would like to know what wrong they committed to earn this additional burden of borrowings,” Soren wrote.
The obvious question that is being asked by all is why the Government of India could not borrow and compensate states to fulfill its constitutional commitments, he added.
According to Soren, Jharkhand has witnessed a loss of Rs 2,500 crore in the current fiscal year, but no compensation has been released so far by the Centre.
He also further alleged in his letter that reluctance and inability of the central government to provide states with their full dues is a betrayal of the commitment it made in the Parliament council of meetings held so far.