The Centre on Wednesday remained non-committal on granting the special category status to any state, saying the 14th Finance Commission has not made any distinction between general category and special category states and has substantially increased the net shareable taxes in all states.
The written reply of Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai came in response to YSR Congress member V Vijayasai Reddy’s question on whether the government has announced that henceforth no special category status would be given to any state.
The minister said as per the recommendations of the FFC, the Union government had decided to increase the share of net shareable taxes to the states from 32 percent to 42 percent for the period 2015–20. He said the same has also been retained by the Fifteenth Finance Commission at 41 percent (1 percent adjusted on account of the creation of the UT of Jammu and Kashmir) for the periods 2020–21 and 2021–26.
Rai said the central government has agreed to give special assistance to Andhra Pradesh to make up for the additional central share the state might have received from 2015-16 to 2019-20 if the funding of centrally sponsored schemes had been shared at a ratio of 90:10 between the centre and the state.
The special assistance is to be provided by way of repayment of loan and interest for the externally aided projects (EAPs) signed and disbursed by the state from 2015-16 to 2019-20, he said.
For the eight northeastern states, the Himalayan states of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and the UT of Jammu and Kashmir, Rai said, as per the recommendations of the sub-group of chief ministers on the rationalisation of centrally sponsored schemes, the sharing pattern of funding of core schemes under the centrally sponsored schemes is 90:10 between the centre and the state.
