New Delhi, September 1
Punjab and Haryana today urged the Centre to confine its role to macro-level management of Central schemes and allow their implementation to the states as per their individual requirement.

Making a forceful presentation before the National Development Council, which met here under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, to finalise the approach paper to the tenth Plan, the states from north India pointed out that they need more funds to spur growth.

The Chandigarh Administrator, Lieut-Gen J.F.R.Jacob (retd), said the city infrastructure was planned for a population of five lakh and it could not cope with the expanding population growth. He said multi-pronged strategies were required, including acquisition of land in the periphery, to check unauthorised growth around the villages of the UT. This would need additional allocations during the tenth Plan period, he added.

For Punjab, which was apprehensive about the future of the Bathinda refinery following a proposal in the agenda paper to go slow on addition of fresh refining capacities, Mr Vajpayee personally assured the state Chief Minister, Mr Parkash Singh Badal, that there was no cause for him to worry on this count.

Punjab Government officials pointed out that when Mr Badal raised the refinery issue at the meeting, the Prime Minister clarified that there was nothing like this.

Mr Badal in his presentation on the approach to the tenth Plan suggested decentralisation of the planning process and devolution of a larger chunk of the Central revenues to the states.

Regretting that this had not happened so far, Mr Badal pointed out that even in the approach paper to the Plan, the same strategy of “centralised planning and dictating the states is proposed to be pursued.”

“Such an approach is, perhaps, premised on the misplaced belief that the Central Government is able to manage its finances and implement its development programmes more efficiently than the state, which is not borne out by experience”, he said.

The Punjab Chief Minister pointed out that given the finances of the states, they were in no position to make any positive contribution towards funding the Plan and it was necessary to increase devolution of Central taxes to the states from 29 per cent to 50 per cent.

Dealing at length with various issues on the agriculture front, including higher minimum support price for crops, diversification of crops, increased storage space and impact of the WTO agreement, Mr Badal said it was time that the Union Government evolved a comprehensive National Agriculture Policy.

Mr Badal said the revised Gadgil formula for providing Central assistance to states was heavily loaded against the developed states like Punjab and there was a need to evolve other indicators of performance like tax effort, fiscal management etc.

Adequate compensation for farmers in bordering areas, reintroduction of freight equalisation to make sourcing of raw materials from other states cheaper, tax holiday for industrial units located in Gurdaspur district, adjoining J and K and Himachal Pradesh, and increased funds for promotion and growth of information technology were some other points raised by Mr Badal.

The Haryana Chief Minister, Mr Om Prakash Chautala, urged the Centre to announce MSP for various crops well in advance on the basis of a period of five years to encourage diversification of crops in a desired manner.

He said the Planning Commission should not reduce the total quantum of financial assistance to the states while reducing the number of centrally-sponsored schemes. Also, the states should be free to devise their own guidelines suitable to local conditions for the implementation of the schemes.

Mr Chautala also urged the Central Government to reschedule its loans given to Haryana and defer the repayment liability up to March 31, 2005. The repayment liability was estimated to be about Rs 1399 crore during 2000-2005.

He urged the Central Government to provide adequate financial assistance to the state for taking advance steps for introduction of VAT from April 1, 2002.

The Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister, Prof Prem Kumar Dhumal, urged the Prime Minister to convene a meeting of political parties to arrive at a consensus on the various steps required to achieve fiscal balance and improved governance requirement. This would also check tendency of competitive populism, he added.