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Thursday, Sep 09, 2004

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Planning Commission to allocate additional funds

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 8. A full meeting of the Planning Commission is to take place here tomorrow with the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, chairing it. Top on the agenda is the allocation of an additional Rs. 10,000 crores earmarked in this year's budget for special schemes to implement the priorities highlighted in the Common Minimum Programme of the United Progressive Alliance.

Sources in the commission indicated that the additional allocation would be divided in the 60:40 ratio between the Centre and the States — that is, Rs. 6,000 crores for the Central Ministries and the balance to the States.

The difficulty in making these allocations can be gauged from the fact that the commission received requests from Central Ministries for additional allocation totalling Rs. 33,000 crores. After hard bargaining, the commission has been able to bring down this figure to Rs. 12,000 crores but what is on offer is only Rs. 6,000 crores.

Mid-day meal scheme

It has also been more or less decided that the additional allocation would basically go towards the mid-day meal scheme, the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (universal education) and for railway safety.

The Centre is known to be keen on handing over the mid-day meal scheme to the States so that its burden is proportionately reduced. On Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, the commission found that the Human Resource Development Ministry has not been able to utilise the existing allocation and hence the view that the "absorptive capacity" of this programme does not entail substantial extra funding.

Other items on the agenda include a review of the mid-term appraisal of the Tenth Five Year Plan. This would permit the Government to make an assessment of the programmes and policies of the previous Government and introduce corrective measures where required. The meeting will also review the report of the National Development Council sub-committee on Centrally-sponsored schemes with the ultimate objective of handing them over to the States.

Apart from the full-time members of the Planning Commission, tomorrow's meeting is likely to be attended by the Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, the Defence Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, the Railway Minister, Lalu Prasad, the Agriculture Minister, Sharad Pawar, the Minister for Telecommunications and Information Technology, Dayanidhi Maran, and the Minister of State for Planning, M.V. Rajshekharan. The HRD Minister, Arjun Singh, is away on a foreign tour and is not expected to attend.

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