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Frozen outlays upset Ministries

By Alok Mukherjee

NEW DELHI FEB. 13. Differences between the Planning Commission and the Union Finance Ministry over budgetary support to the Central Plan for the coming fiscal are fast snowballing into a controversy.

With the Ministry pegging the gross budgetary support (GBS) at Rs. 1,17,500 crores for 2003-04 against the Planning Commission demand for Rs. 1,34,064 crores, the individual Ministries and Departments have been indicated their likely annual outlay by the Planning Commission. And, in most cases, the outlays have been frozen at 2002-03 levels.

Consequently, letters have started pouring in to the Planning Commission protesting against the lower allocation of funds with requests for enhancement. The Planning Commission, on its part, is understood to have appraised the Prime Minister's Office of the likely implications of the lower GBS allocation, along with the objections raised by the individual Ministries.

According to Government sources, the list of Ministers who have sent in protest letters include Murli Manohar Joshi, Arun Jaitley, Shanta Kumar, Ananth Kumar, Jagmohan, Sahib Singh Verma and T. R. Baalu, since most of them are in charge of social sectors which are likely to face a resource crunch.

The Human Resource Development Minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, has in fact raised two issues with the Planning Commission: the lower allocation vis-a-vis the Ministry's demand and the proposal to earmark 10 per cent of the budget support specifically for the northeast. In this context, Dr. Joshi has listed out the various institutions under the administrative charge of his Ministry, which operate exclusively in the northeast while there are other projects which have a national presence. Hence, his objections to earmarking additional funds for the "northeast only".

The Rural Development Minister, Shanta Kumar, has also protested against the outlay of Rs 10,270 crores for the coming year against the revised estimate of Rs 15,176 crores that his Ministry would be spending in the current year. The Rural Development Ministry had actually sought an outlay of Rs 26,718 crores for 2003-04.

The Environment and Forests Minister, T.R. Baalu, has made a similar complaint against his Ministry's allocation being frozen at the current year's level, saying many critical projects which are at an advanced stage of execution would suffer. The issue is likely to see a possible Prime Ministerial intervention before it is sorted out.

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