No compensation in payment of GST share to states
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday presented the general budget 2022-23, however, for Jharkhand this budget turns out to be dismal. There are no state specific suggestions or acknowledgement of the (people's) needs in the budget.
Harishwar Dayal - Director in Chief - Centre for Fiscal Studies Department of Planning-cum-Finance, Government of Jharkhand said, “Jharkhand has gained nothing from the budget as there was no specific announcement for state in the budget. There are no announcements for state in education, health or pending railway projects.”
Dayal further said, “There was no announcement of compensation for losses the state has incurred in central taxes in the past two financial years. In the financial year 2019-20 there was a loss of Rs 3300 crore in central taxes, while in the year 2020-21 the loss in central taxes was Rs 900. But there was no mention of compensation for the losses of central taxes for the past two years.”
For backward states like Jharkhand it was much expected from the budget but there was no specific relief.
Regarding GST, Dayal said: “Most of the welfare work is done by the state government though it has limited sources of revenue collection. GST share was of great help but from July this year, it will not be provided to the state. The Union government should have allowed GST share for five years as demanded by the states. Though the government accepted that it collected Rs 146996 crore as GST, it did not show any generosity in payment of its share to the state government.”
However, sources said that Jharkhand is going to be benefited with the announcement of 400 Vande Bharat express. It is expected that the Coal Capital residents’ demand for direct train between Dhanbad and Delhi will be fulfilled in this budget. For the past two and half decades, Railway has been rejecting the proposal of direct train from Dhanbad to Delhi and extension of trains from Delhi and Yesvantpur to Dhanbad. But the hope of running Train-18 i.e. Vande Bharat Express via Dhanbad can get a new impetus.
Actually, Indian Railways has already made preparations to run the Vande Bharat train between Ranchi and Howrah. Vande Bharat Express train running from Ranchi will have stoppage at railway stations like Dhanbad, Chandrapura, Bokaro and Muri in Jharkhand. At the same time, this proposed train will stop at Durgapur and Asansol in West Bengal.
The Railway has already decided to run Vande Bharat express between Ranchi and Howrah from April 23. The high speed 16 coach Vande Bharat Express which were first rolled out in 2018, can cruise at maximum speeds of 180 km an hour. Currently, only two such trains are operational with one between New Delhi and Varanasi and the other between New Delhi and Katra (Jammu and Kashmir).