Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat has thanked the Prime Minsiter Narendra Modi and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for accepting that Uttarakhand has suffered loss with the recommendation of 14th finance commission and assuring that it would be compensated for shortly. He expressed this view while interacting with media at his residence here on Sunday afternoon, a day after he presented the State’s case at the 11th Inter-State Council meet in Delhi on July 16.
With recommendation of 14th finance commission, state would get 42 percent share from central government’s tax but Utarakhand would suffer loss of Rs 1,758 crore in this financial year. Although actual figure would come in next financial year but this is true that in next four year State would suffer loss of Rs 7000 crore with this recommendation. As Finance Minsiter has understood the State’s loss so Rawat is sure that state would not suffer such loss at least by next financial year.
“We have appealed to the Union Government to implement the 90:10 funding pattern in Externally Aided Project (EAP) as was being followed during previous regime. As Uttarkhand has major contribution of national eco service amounting to about Rs 40,000 crore per annum so we have demanded green bonus against this. I hope that in coming days Union Government will give green bonus to the State,” he said.
He further said, “Union home minister Rajnath Singh has given positive response on the issue of Doppler Radar and construction of road in border areas. We pointed that there are 400 villages vulnerable to disaster and demanded financial help for relocation of these villages. We also demanded that we should be given liberty in exchange of forest land for rehabilitation of these villages. As we would vacate these lands and forest department can make use of these lands for forestation. We have also presented our view on Punchhi commission’s recommendation, which talked about backward state, so we said that such liberty should be given in view of geographical disadvantage as well. We also said that the system to be followed in Panchayat decisions should be left to the state only. We have strongly protested union government’s decision to include forest and environment in union list instead of concurrent list,” he said.
Rawat said, “As State always have floating population and also sharing international boundaries with two nations i.e. Nepal and China so we demanded wireless
communication system like spectrum. As State already has broadband connectivity, now each village should be connected with broadband. For this the Centre should give us statellite phones free of cost. You also open more and more number of banks and also ease the norms to achieve the desired goal,”said Rawat. He has also appealed to waive off the spectrum charges as well.
Replying to a question on whether the government will ban sale of liquor sale in the state, Rawat said that as Haryana Government had banned but failed to achieve the desired result, Uttarakand is studying the Bihar Government decision to ban the liquor in the state. If they succeed then we would think on it otherwise no such step to be taken in the State, he added.