NEW DELHI: Almost 8 years after it was submitted, deliberations between the Centre and state governments on recommendations of the Justice M M Punchhi Commission on Centre-State relations have been completed and will be put up soon to the Inter-State Council headed by the Prime Minister and comprising all chief ministers, for a final decision.
A meeting of the standing committee of the Inter-State Council, a smaller forum for discussing issues relating to Centre-state relations, was chaired by home minister
Rajnath Singh on Friday to finalise the view on 88 recommendations contained in Volume VI and Volume VII of the Punchhi Commission report. These relate to environment, natural resources like water, forests and minerals and infrastructure; besides socio-economic development, public policy and good governance.
Two meetings of the standing committee held last year had deliberated on recommendations contained in the first five volumes that, among other issues, pertained to the role of governor, management of Centre-State relations, finance-sharing mechanism, local governments and internal security.
With today’s meeting — attended by finance minister Piyush Goyal, road transport minister
Nitin Gadkari, law & justice minister
Ravi Shankar Prasad and Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb, among others — deliberations are complete on all 273 recommendations contained in the Punchhi Commission report. The home ministry said on Friday that recommendations finalised by the standing committee will now be placed before the full Inter-State Council for a decision.
While 7 chief ministers are part of the standing committee, only Deb attended today’s deliberations. Ministers from UP, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Punjab and
Rajasthan represented their respective states at the meeting.