ProMASS News
Agartala, September 08, 2019: Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb while addressing the 68th North East Council (NEC) meeting in Guwahati today requested for providing 12 percent share of NEC allocation to Tripura. Besides, he also urged the DoNER Ministry to sanction some new projects and made slew of suggestions on fund transfer. The NEC meeting was chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
He said, even as the 66th Plenary of the North Eastern Council decided that 12 percent of allocation would be made to Tripura as per a formula based on various development indices like the geographical condition, population and human index, it has been observed that the share of Tripura over last five years was only 7.20 percent.
“It is indeed an area of concern for our State. It is requested to adhere for providing 12 percent share to Tripura,” the Chief Minister said. Commenting on 90:10 funding between Centre and State, Biplab Kumar Deb said, Tripura faces fund constraints in implementation of Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS) and schemes under Central Assistance to State Plan (CAP).
“Even though the funding pattern between Central Ministries and State Governments of NE States is 90:10, it is still a difficult to meet even 10 percent State share due to fund constraints. Consequently, many programmes under CSS do not get implemented resulting in loss for the State and the Central Ministries also not being able to spend the required 10 percent of their budgets for the NE Region. As a matter of fact, the situation is unlikely to be different in the other North Eastern States. In this context, he suggested, NEC funding for schemes/projects of NE States may be provided 100 percent grant.
On sanction of new projects, Deb said, “I would request the Ministry of DoNER to sanction some new projects, particularly, ‘Regional Nursing College at Hapania’ for an estimated cost of Rs. 65.14 crore, ‘Construction of 132 KV D/C transmission line from Suryamaninagar Sub-station to Udaipur Sub-station (40 KM) including 2 (two) feeders bay at Udaipur, Banduar’ at an estimated cost of Rs. 38.77 crore and ‘improvement and up-gradation of road from Hmunpui (NH-44A) to Damcherra (Tripura-Mizoram Border) via Monchuang in the State of Tripura’ at an estimated cost of Rs. 82.47 crore under the scheme North East Road Sector Development Scheme (NERSDS),” Deb added.
He also made slew of suggestions. According to Deb, presently, 60 percent of the NEC budget is distributed among the 8 NE states and the remaining 40 percent Budget is set aside for Central component for Central Ministries and agencies for taking up regional projects. Instead, it may be well thought of whether 90 percent NFC Budget may he distributed to the States and the remaining 10 percent may be retained by NEC for taking up such regional projects.
“The outlay for Rs. 580 crore for 2019- 20 to NEC is too small to take care of the ongoing incomplete projects leaving hardly any worth mentioning amount for new projects in the pipeline. In order to address the problem of regional disparity, NEC may be adequately funded and its budget during 2019-20 may also be substantially enhanced,” Deb pointed out. He said the NEC liability for the ongoing projects of Tripura was perhaps the lowest among the North Eastern States.
In his speech, the Chief Minister highlighted achievements of the State Government on multiple fronts as well as detailed about Government’s plans to make the State Model state.
