Chennai, Nov 16 (IANS): Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Palanivel Thiagarajan has urged the Central government to enable states to access data of income tax, Aadhaar and upgrade Chennai-Kanyakumari road to eight lanes.

Speaking at the meeting of Chief Ministers and Finance Ministers convened by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday, Thiagarajan said there should be a data sharing protocol that allows the States to access data of Income Tax, Aadhaar, Covid-19 among others, which would supplement efforts of states towards a data-driven administration.

Thiagarajan also urged the Central government to convert the Chennai-Kanyakumari highway into eight lanes to reduce logistic costs for the industries and speed up 11 pending highway projects.

According to him, the recent reduction in prices of petrol and diesel by the Union Government has provided a golden opportunity to conduct a case study to analyse the impact of price on elasticity of demand and supply and on growth in general.

Appreciating the Central government's National Single Window Portal (Maadhyam) for obtaining clearances from various departments, Thiagarajan recommended that aftercare services and grievance redressal mechanism may also be included in the platform.

He suggested that the timeline for clearance under Central legislations may be reduced from the present four months to one month and import permits for medical devices and insecticides may be expedited.

Thiagarajan also sought Central government's cooperation to resolve the bottlenecks being faced in the expansion of four major airports - Chennai, Coimbatore, Tiruchirappalli and Thoothukudi.

He also requested the Union Government to ensure adequate and continuous supply of coal and help access to supplies of Chandrabila Coal Block in Odisha.

He also urged the Centre to formulate a viable offshore wind development policy to further give an impetus to renewable energy.