Southern States - Tamil Nadu

PMK will ask Centre for more funds to T.N.

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI March 24. The PMK founder, S. Ramadoss, today said he would impress upon the Central Government to allocate more funds to Tamil Nadu, which is facing a resource crunch.

Presenting a draft budget for Tamil Nadu, he said that the PMK, which was a constituent of the ruling NDA, would take up with the Centre the question of greater devolution of funds to the States.

Identifying food security as an important issue, he called for the formulation of a comprehensive set of indicators to categorise families below poverty the line. Families belonging to the Scheduled Castes, those with children less than five years old, those with an illiterate adult and those living in `kutcha' houses, without access to drinking water and regular meals should be factored in while identifying below the poverty line families.

Dr. Ramadoss urged the Government to give up competitive populism and vote bank politics and asked it to adopt consensus politics. The draft budget suggested regular meetings of the Cabinet with political leaders. A periodical meeting of Chief Ministers of the southern States should be arranged to discuss issues of economic interest.

The Government must proceed cautiously in dealing with public sector enterprises as the livelihood of workers was involved. Rather than handing them over to private businessmen, efforts must be made to revamp public sector enterprises and make them profitable.

Every year, the Government must compile a summary of the critical fiscal indicators. It should constitute a `guarantee redemption fund' to tackle the problem of Government guarantees.

Every budget should furnish a copy of the Action Taken Report, containing the extent of implementation of the proposals of the previous year, he added.

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