Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal on Saturday stressed on the devolution of more powers to States even as he maintained the Centre was usurping the rights and authority of the States in violation of the spirit and even the specific provisions of the Constitution and reducing them to the status of mere beggars.
Touching the important aspects of Center-State relations at the 11th Inter State Council meeting held in New Delhi, the Deputy Chief Minister said cutting across party lines there was a widespread consensus that the trend towards centralisation of authority was still continuing. He emphasised that States should be given much greater operational freedom to choose and finance development priorities of their people.
“The most dangerous exhibition of this tendency is seen in how the centre has been quietly shifting subjects from the State list to the Concurrent list and from the Concurrent to the Union list which amounts to constitutional rampage”, he added.
Deputy CM suggested that for matters in ‘concurrent lists’, due weightage should be given to the opinion of the State Government and on ‘Central list’ matters, consultation of effected States should be taken. He suggested that the post of Governor should not be kept vacant for more than a month at a time.
On the crucial river waters issue, Badal said the Punjab had already suffered gross injustice in the matter of allocation of Ravi-Beas waters as the purposes of Beas Project were not kept in view while deciding the allocations.
He said there has been tremendous decline in the ground water level in
Punjab which was a direct consequence of inter-basin transfer of water to non-riparian States.
Citing another glaring example of injustice with Punjab in the meeting he elaborated that while reorganising Punjab not only large Punjabi speaking area was given to Haryana, but also its capital city was not made part of the State. He said Punjab would be the only State in the world whose capital city is not part of the State.
Badal said “We have been consistently demanding the inclusion of Chandigarh and other Punjabi speaking areas in Punjab which have been kept out of the State. The injustice does not end here, even the decision of maintaining of 60:40 ratio in posting of officers to Chandigarh from Punjab and Haryana is being violated continuously”. He emphasised that till Chandigarh to be transferred to Punjab, at least the sanctity of already decide ratio should be maintained in all departments/categories of employees.
He argued that the formula and yardstick adopted for allocation of share in Central funds collected from a particular State should be recast in a manner that encourages growth, development, performance and efficiency. He emphasised that Punjab needs special assistance for diversification of crops since the existing pattern has reached stagnation.
The Deputy CM stressed that the State Government has adopted a zero tolerance policy to curb the menace of drugs and three-pronged policy for combating drug trafficking has been implemented whereas the anti-national and anti-Punjab forces to gain political mileage were trying to label every Punjabi as a drug addict.
Badal pleaded that deployment of BSF in border districts should be brought on par with the deployment of force in J&K sector atleast till
State assembly elections scheduled for February-March 2017.
Besides this, Punjab may be included as a category-A STATE for financial assistance at 90:10 Centre-State sharing basis on the pattern of J&K and eight North-Eastern States under the Modernisation of State Police Forces Scheme.
Batting for the royalty on river waters and foodgrains he demanded that State Government should be compensated for the loss due to introduction of GST as the Punjab would be in a loss of approximately Rs2000 crore on account of subsumation of purchase tax. Besides this, centrally sponsored schemes should not be ‘one size fits all’ but should be State specific and be 100% funded by the Central Government.
Thanking Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for effecting recent increase in the devolution of funds from the Center to the States from 32 per cent to 42 per cent, Badal demanded that this share should be atleast 50 per cent to enable the States to achieve more economic prosperity.