Punjab wants use of Finance Commission grants for emergency relief by urban and rural civic bodies

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Sunday urged Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to amend rules for the utilisation of Finance Commission grants to enable Urban Local Bodies and Panchayati Raj Institutions to spend them to fight coronavirus spread at the grassroots level.

Singh asked the Union minister to advise the Union ministries of Housing & Urban Affairs and Panchayati Raj to initiate immediate action so that the grants by the 14th Finance Commission could be used to provide emergency reliefs like medicines, food etc to the poorest sections by the ULBs and the PRIs.

The ULBs and PRIs should be allowed to utilise grants received under the 14th Finance Commission for emergency provision of relief to mitigate the suffering caused in towns and villages due to the lockdown in the country to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, the chief minister said in a release.

Singh said the Punjab government had recently allowed ULBs to use these funds for fumigation of urban areas.

Pleading the state's case, Singh said the emergency reliefs like distribution of medicines and food should also be allowed both by the ULBs and PRIs to ease the burden on the state's resources and provide much needed relief to the most deserving people at the grassroots level.

Singh told Sitharaman that these grants are utilized as per guidelines issued by the government of India.

He said both urban and rural local self-government institutions have available with them the unspent funds which could be immediately utilized for the provision of relief to the poor, distressed and the most vulnerable population living in slums and villages.

Maintaining that these groups were the worst affected ones due to the COVID-19 pandemic due to dearth of resources, the CM said in order to mitigate their distress, the ULBs and the Gram Panchayats are well placed to contribute effectively to the anti-coronavirus fights as structures of local self-government at the grassroots.