Bihar may get funds but not special status

The plan panel is averse to the status fearing similar demands by other states.

Updated on: Mar 20, 2013, 01:52:52 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s adhikar rally to seek special status may result in more Central funds for the state but not the coveted status.

The Planning Commission is not agreeable to Nitish’s idea as it fears that it other states would follow suit and it would result in huge burden on Centre’s meager resources.

Not just opposition states but even Congress ruled states like Rajasthan have demanded special status. State Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has already sought special status from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the ground of social and educational backwardness of the state.

Rejecting his demand, Planning Commission secretary Sindhushree Khullar told the state government as per existing criteria special status can be granted only to hill states. The backward states can get Additional Central Assistance for sectors facing backwardness but not the special status.

The reason was simple.

The special category states have to provide only 10% of matching grant to utilise Central government funds. Other states have to allocating 30%. As the financial requirements of hill states were not high, the annual financial burden on the Central government on account of special status was not big.

“Extending the benefit to states like Bihar would mean curtailing funding of 16 flagship programmes,” a senior plan panel official explained. Such an idea in crucial election year may not be acceptable to the UPA government.

What Nitish’s rally in Delhi on Sunday could fetch is some more money from the Centre for the state like Rajasthan is expected to get on Wednesday. The panel officials expect a 20% increase in Rajasthan’s annual plan for 2013-14, election year for the state. This is when Finance Minister P Chidambaram had increased the plan expenditure by just 6% for the financial year 2013-14.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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