Tweaking CSS sharing ratio will put extra burden on Bihar: Min

Bihar government today hit out at the Centre for tweaking the sharing ratio of the states in implementing the Centrally-Sponsored Schemes (CSS) as well as horizontal division of tax revenue as per recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission which, it said, will put unnecessary burden on a resource-crunched state like Bihar.
Replying to an adjournment motion in the Assembly brought by JD(U) MLAs Vinod Prasad Yadav and Shyam Rajak, besides 11 others legislators, Water Resources Department Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh said Bihar has been unnecessarily burdened and made to put in more funds under its sharing ration with the Centre on implementing the CSS in the state during 2015-16 and 2016-17.

Reeling out figures to buttress his claim, he said the Centre has set aside a revised budget of Rs 20,102.59 crore for implementation of various central schemes in Bihar for which the state government had provisioned Rs 6,306.59 crore, but the sharing pattern tweaked by the Union Finance Ministry's circular in November last year forces the state government to cough up an additional Rs 4,508.63 crore to raise its overall share to Rs 10,715.22 crore.
Similarly, the Centre has allocated Rs 22,467.37 crore in the current fiscal towards its share in the CSS in Bihar where the latter's share should have been Rs 7,005.57 crore under the old sharing pattern, but now it will have to bear an additional Rs 4,917.87 crore at Rs 11,927.74 crore, he said.

Charging the Narendra Modi government with squeezing Bihar's financial resources further, the WRD minister said the state's share in the divisible pool of central tax resources has been reduced to 9.66 per cent on the basis of the 14th Finance Commission Recommendations against the corresponding figure of 10.92 per cent under the 13th Finance Commission.
Though the states' collective share in the divisible pool of central tax revenue has increased from 42 per cent on the 14th Finance Commission's Recommendations against 32 per cent by the previous panel, the parameters for distribution pattern has been tweaked to "distress" backward states like Bihar, Singh alleged.