The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government on Tuesday reiterated that the BJP-led Centre was “misleading” Delhiites regarding funds for municipal corporations.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted a party pamphlet detailing funds provided to civic bodies by his government and sought a reply from the BJP.
The Delhi BJP retaliated by alleging that the AAP government had “failed” to provide funds to the municipal corporations as per the recommendations of the 3rd Delhi Finance Commission.
A statement by the Delhi government read: “The Centre is misleading people on the issue of funds provided to the Delhi government. Delhi is being mistreated by the Centre and the grant-in-aid for the local bodies are not being provided, which would total ₹4,087 crore as per 2011 census.”
It also claimed that the Centre had “rejected” its “repeated requests” for the implementation of the 4th Delhi Finance Commission recommendations.
“To dispel any misinformation and to counter false claims of the Centre and the civic bodies, the Delhi government is once again placing in the public domain the entire facts related to funds released by the Centre and the truth of funding pattern for Delhi,” the statement read.
“Release of funds by the Delhi government [to local bodies] is intrinsically intertwined with allocations to be made to Delhi by the Central government,” its stated.
‘Unfair treatment’
The government alleged “discriminatory and unfair treatment” towards Delhi and its people in terms of its “fair share” in taxes collected by the Centre and grants-in-aid. “The current practice and manner of sharing of resources followed by the Centre unfairly deprives the Delhi government of its rightful share from the divisible pool of Central taxes, which significantly affects its developmental budget and ability to meet the needs and aspirations of its ever-growing population,” the statement read.
For the current year, the Delhi government was allocated ₹325 crore as ‘central assistance’.
Allocations of ‘central assistance’ made to States such as Assam, Goa, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, among other, which are “similarly situated” have increased “substantially” while that of Delhi remained static since 2001-02, revealed data released by the AAP government.
‘Central assistance’ to Goa increased from ₹126.12 crore in 2001-02 to ₹2,979 crore in 2018-19 while that of Himachal Pradesh went up from ₹389.13 crore to ₹5,619. 31 crore in the same period, showed the data.
“Delhi has been discriminated in comparison to other Union Territories, majority of whom do not even have legislative assemblies,” it said.
Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken said when the Congress was in power in 2013-14 in Delhi, it had allocated 11.76% of the annual budget to the three civic bodies. “However, the AAP and the BJP have reduced it to 2.60%. If they had allocated the same percentage of funds as we had, this year the civic bodies would have got ₹2,015 crore more,” said Mr. Maken.