Kolkata: The Opposition Left Front in West Bengal today demanded Rs 5,50,000 crore for the state during 2015-2020 period, which is more than double of what the ruling Trinamool Congress government had demanded from the 14th Finance Commission.
“We from the Left Front had met the 14th Finance Commission and the meeting was fruitful. We had demanded about Rs 5,50,000 crore for the state,” former state finance minister Asim Dasgupta said here today.
Dasgupta had demanded Rs 4,22,000 crore from the 13th Finance Commission when he was the finance minister. The Left Front members are not opposing the waiver and write-off demanded by the TMC-led government, he said.
Dasgupta said the Left Front's main demand to the 14th Finance Commission was to focus on employment driven growth and subsidy to support the state in checking sharp price rise of commodities.
The share of central taxes should be raised to atleast 50 per cent from its present one-third as the states only have primary responsibility for development, he said. “An additional five per cent of taxes should be offered to the states on top of 50 per cent for development of local bodies for greater de-centralisation,” Dasgupta said, adding “We had advocated for more on subsidy and grants in our total demand.”
The former minister put the onus of the Rs 1.92 lakh crore debt on the state created during their regime, on the unilateral policies of the Centre.
The Trinamool Congress-led state government had blamed the previous Left Front regime for delaying the implementation of Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act 2003 by five years leading to a debt waiver loss of close to Rs 3158 crore.
Reacting to the comment, Dasgupta said unless we had done the same, the interest rate on small saving loans would not have reduced to nine per cent and restructuring of loan benefits would not have been offered by the 12th Finance Commission.
“With implementation of FRBM from 2010, the total benefit had been Rs 7520 crore,” Dasgupta said. The former finance minister questioned the present government for not speaking up about the Rs 8000 crore due from the Centre on coal royalty despite Left Front government winning the case in the Supreme Court.
The other Left Front constituents also submitted separate memorandums before the FC, but said the broad contours of demands were the same.
