Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (SP)
New Delhi, Oct 16: The central government, which wants to strengthen its capabilities to undertake relief works during natural calamities on a big scale, finds that funds at its disposal are not enough to meet such a huge task. It is learnt that a ministerial panel has asked state governments to come out with their take on whether a country-wide disaster tax can be levied or whether levy specific to individual states can be introduced.
NDRF is managed by the union government for meeting relief/rehabilitation costs incurred by states which face natural disasters.
The said panel, which is headed by deputy chief minister of Bihar, Sushil Modi, was formed to consider calamity cess. It has observed that the Natural Disaster Response fund is not adequate considering the scale of such disasters. The panel has seven ministers as members. The panel may soon write to the attorney general seeking his views on the legal hurdles if any which might come in the way of levying the above charge or cess.
The group of ministers has decided to ask the GST council to send a questionnaire to states seeking their response. Modi said that the council will draft the questionnaire containing around 20 questions which would be sent to states seeking their response.
During the interaction with states, the mode of creation of fund, disbursement in case of disasters, and whether the tax should be decided individually depending on the natural disasters happening in those particular states, will be included. Modi mentioned that the NDRF has been rapidly coming down since the last some years, particularly during GST regime, duly pointing out that the fund had come down to Rs 3,660 crore in 2017-18 from Rs 6,450 crore in 2016-17. He said that the funding of states currently is not sufficient to meet natural calamities. Natural calamity contingent duty has been major source for the above fund, but this duty is gradually declining.
The group of ministers headed by Modi having Kerala finance minister, Thomas Isaac, Maharashtra finance and excise minister, Sudhir Murgantiwar, Assam finance minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, Uttarakhand finance minister, Prakash Pant, Punjab finance minister, Manpreet Singh Badal, and Odisha finance minister, Sashi Bhushan Behera as members, will meet again in November. The group will also review the current situation to assess whether the current form of NDRF is sufficient to deal with natural disasters.