UPA extends olive branch with 17% plan hike to Didi

The UPA government on Tuesday used finance to woo back Trinamool Congress back into the UPA fold and offered a lot of praise to the state government led by TC chief Mamata Banerjee. Chetan Chauhan reports. West Bengal’s relative prosperity

Updated on: Apr 10, 2013, 02:01:36 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The UPA government on Tuesday used finance to woo back Trinamool Congress back into the UPA fold and offered a lot of praise to the state government led by TC chief Mamata Banerjee.

The Planning Commission offered an olive brand to West Bengal by allocating Rs 30,314 crore for the financial year 2013-14 - a 17% increase from the plan allocation for last financial year.

"We are satisfied with what we have got," Banerjee said after an hour-long meeting with plan panel functionaries. However, the increase in plan allocation is less than last two financial years when Trinamool was part of UPA.

The meeting which was preceded by high drama following heckling of state finance minister Amit Mitra and Banerjee by CPIM's student wing the Students Federation of India (SFI) had its imprint in the meeting with not a single plan panel functionary raising any questions about functioning of the state government.

Both plan panel deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia and planning secretary Sindhushree apologised for the incident even as planning minister Rajiv Shukla praised the state government for its performance.

Ahluwalia was also sympathetic toward Banerjee raising the issue of environment roadblocks for major projects in the state.

"I have asked the chief minister to send me the list of the held back projects. I will take them up with the appropriate ministries," he said.

The plan panel was willing to extend support to West Bengal to improve its industrial performance through skill upgradation, better use of technology and improving business regulatory environment.

When Mukherjee raised the issue of increasing liability of the state government to fund centrally sponsored schemes Ahluwalia assured her of help saying the Central government would introduce flexi-funds in the schemes enabling the state to use some part of the money as per their wish.

The plan panel has circulated a Cabinet note allowing 10% of the money allocated to the states under flexi funds.

In the same vein Banerjee mentioned that she would be raising the issue of increasing debt of the state government with finance minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday.

"I know it is an issue dealt by the finance ministry," she said.

The plan panel was willing to extend support to West Bengal to improve its industrial performance through skill upgradation, better use of technology and improving business regulatory environment.

The plan panel was, however, left wondering when Banerjee sought money for welfare of Bangladeshi migrants saying no Central funds were available to deal with political refugees. She had another unusual demand to make Kolkata hub for film production as scope for growth of Bollywood was limited.

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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