Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu (File photo)
Performing states would not be penalised by the 15th Finance Commission while allocating funds as a mechanism has been devised to incentivise them, Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu said today.
Mr Naidu made the statement in the Rajya Sabha when AIDMK MP V Maitreyan, making a special mention, asked the government to direct the Finance Commission to take 1971 census as basis of allocation of fund to Tamil Naidu and other southern states.
The Chairman said he had a meeting with the Commission Chairman who had assured him that they would be adopting a formula to incentivise the performing states.
"As the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha/Council of states, when I saw this news item, I had called the Chairman of the Finance Commission and also members to my chambers and we had discussed it. They assured me that performing states will not be penalised at all under it," Mr Naidu said.
He said thed panel would adopt "a formula of incentive and disincentive and that's the broad approach, which they have told me."
"The Fifteenth finance Commission would consider 2011 census as the basis of its recommendation on as how much funds are transferred to state from the central pool. This would give a sever blow to Tamil Nadu and other Southern states, which has performed excellently in containing population," he said.
The Commission was constituted in November 2017 and is headed by N K Singh as its Chairman.
According to Maitreyan, for FY 2018-19, the Centre has envisaged a total transfer of Rs 12.69 lakh crore to the state largely based on the formula suggested by 14th finance commission and going by the past trends, which would be about third of spending of states.
A change in population base year means some states like Tamil Nadu would be deprived of huge amount of resources, he said.
"However, in the previous finance commission, for the first time, 10 per cent weightage was given to 2011 population, while 17.5 per cent was retained for 1971 population," he added.