NEW DELHI: The Left parties on Sunday asked the Manmohan Singh Government to allocate sufficient funds in the 11th Five Year Plan for fulfilling the commitments in the Common Minimum Programme and demanded an increase in the Gross Budgetary Support (GBS) for the Plan.

"The 11th Five Year Plan, which is currently in the process of being formulated, gives a good opportunity for the UPA Government to reaffirm its commitments made in the National Common Minimum Programme. In order to do justice to those commitments, Plan expenditure has to be increased substantially," Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat and his CPI counterpart, A.B. Bardhan, said in a joint letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

They identified six areas in which specific commitments have been made in the NCMP. These include increasing public investment in agriculture, spending 6 per cent of the GDP on education, 2 to 3 per cent of the GDP on health, ensuring social security for workers in unorganised sector, universalisation of the Integrated Child Development Scheme, providing a legal guarantee for atleast 100 days of employment for at least one-able bodied person in every rural, urban poor and lower-middle class household and strengthening the public distribution system.

The GBS for the 10th Plan, they said, has been around 7 per cent and the rough estimate suggests that the GBS for the 11th Plan has to be increased by at least another 4.75 per cent of the GDP in order to meet the NCMP commitments.

"There is also the plight of the most deprived sections to be taken account of. Apart from the dalits and adivasis, the condition of the Muslim community is most deplorable whether it be access to education or employment. Many of them who are artisans are finding their livelihood destroyed. Special allocations will be required to address their problems," the letter said.

They said it appears that the Planning Commission has proposed an increase in the GBS for the 11th Plan by around 2.5 per cent of the GDP only. "This implies that either the NCMP mandated schemes would be underfunded or Plan expenditure on the other items would be cut in order to fulfil the NCMP commitments, which is unwarranted. There does not seem to be any lack of domestic resources in order to enhance Plan expenditure to fulfil the NCMP commitments, provided the Government has the political will to mobilise the same," the Left leaders said.

Referring to an official note, they said total tax exemptions/concessions granted during 2004-2005 stood at Rs. 1,76,073 crores (5.8 per cent of GDP) out of which corporate tax exemptions alone amounted to Rs. 57,852 crore (1.9 per cent of GDP). They said curbing tax relief along with the implementation of other proposals for resource mobilisation made by the Left parties would help in the financing of the enhanced Plan expenditure. They said GBS should be increased by at least 1 per cent of the GDP from the first year and increased by a similar amount in the subsequent years.

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