New Delhi: Despite remonstrations the Central government on Friday allocated only 773 crore rupees to the North Eastern Council for 2015 -16, while rejecting the demand of the Northeastern states for continuation of their special category status.
The states led by Meghalaya and Tripura protested the gradual decline rather than the increase in the funds of the nearly half-century old North Eastern Council. But despite the protest there was no proportional increase in the annual allocation of the Council where the states also made an adamant stand on continuation of special category status for them.
The projected outlay of the NEC for the twelfth Five Year (2012-17) was Rs.13027.38 crore and the total approved outlay from 2012 onwards was Rs.6108 crore, the states said. Again the actual allocation since 2012-13 has been static at Rs.770 crore reflecting a decline in real terms and during 2014-15, a unilateral budget cut of Rs.191 crore has reduced the plan kitty to Rs.579 crore only, they pointed out.
This has been a serious setback and has delayed implementation of important project prioritized during 2014-15. The states led by Congress-ruled Meghalaya and Left-ruled Tripura demanded a resolution on continuation of special category to all the eight North East states which created a stir but was not accepted by the DoNER Ministry.
The Raghuram Rajan Committee report has placed some NE states under the important category deleting the rest. Most states veered round Meghalaya’s proposal to resolve to enhance the NEC’s annual plan (2015-16) to the tune of around Rs.1500 crore which is a bare minimum requirement, just for meeting the requirements for State specific projects.
For this a joint request could be made from all the members to the Ministry of Finance for increasing NEC’s budget to Rs.1500 crore this year so that the backlog of previous years can be substantially reduced. Shortfall in Plan allocation NEC) has hit development projects, as the lion’s share of the regional planning board’s funds is utilized for paying back liabilities.
For the annual plan 2015-16, an outlay of Rs 1088.21 crore was proposed by the NEC. A major portion of the NEC budget is utilized for clearing committed liabilities. During 2012-13, 61.72 per cent of the plan budget was used for ongoing projects and only 38.28 per cent was released for new projects.
A major handicap is that the NEC being the statutory regional planning body, its secretariat has no scope or provision to mobilize resources.
The NEC is statutorily mandated to act as a regional planning body, but with the meagre plan funds provided under the GBS, it is yet to become a pivotal planner for the region, the states said.
