CHENNAI: Federal structures such as the legislative, executive and judiciary in India are under threat from the BJP-led union government, former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram said.
Addressing a lecture, "The Future of Cooperative Federalism" organised by Asian College of Journalism on Friday, he said there has been a concentration of powers in the hands of the union government over the past decade. "Article 254(2), granting states the power to make laws that can override or differ from parliamentary laws, has been practically eliminated with the concurrent list now dominated by Parliament," he said.
Chidambaram also criticised the union government's stance on withholding funds for centrally sponsored schemes.
"Such schemes have a greater degree of latitude to the states because funding is also partly from them. Today, no centrally sponsored scheme can be implemented in the states. Even if you change one word of the scheme, the union government will stop the funding. States such as West Bengal, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have also faced such problems," Chidambaram said.
Underlining the future of federalism, Chidambaram said its structures are being encroached upon every day. "The future of federalism is weak," he added. IT Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan raised questions about job creation for India's significant workforce.
"Today roughly one in six people in the world is an Indian. India has the potential to be about 25 to 30% of the global workforce for the next 20 years. What are we doing to provide jobs for them? Are we bringing investments for them? Are we improving the inclusion of the education system? Are we facilitating the transfer of our skilled resources to other parts of the world," Thiaga Rajan asked.
Kerala Finance Minister KN Balagopal raised concern about the proposed delimitation of parliamentary constituencies based on the 2011 population census, suggesting that states effectively controlling birth rates could lose MP seats, while states with higher populations might gain more representation.