CORRESPONDENT
AGARTALA: Tripura Finance Minister Pranajit Singha Roy has hinted that the state's finances are facing severe constraints as the Centre has stopped releasing Revenue Gap funding to states. Addressing a programme at Pragna Bhawan here, he said the state used to receive Rs 4,000 crore as a gap grant annually and that its discontinuation was posing a major challenge to the state economy. He said this was also one of the reasons for the delay in releasing Dearness Allowance (DA) to government employees.
He said the discontinuation of Revenue Gap funding was causing problems for all states. The 16th Finance Commission has advised states to increase their own revenue to meet non-plan expenditure, and the state government is trying to find ways to overcome the crisis, he said.
The financial constraints are spilling over into a political crisis for the state government as demands for the release of pending DA for state government employees are increasing. Opposition political parties are also using the issue ahead of two major elections - the Village Committee elections in the TTAADC areas and the civic elections - scheduled for the latter part of the year.
At present, state government employees receive 41 per cent DA, while Central Government employees receive 60 per cent, leaving a gap of 19 percentage points. However, the Finance Minister assured state government employees that the state government was trying to reduce the gap.
He said the BJP-led government had not imposed any new tax on people in the past eight years, keeping their financial burden in mind, while DA had been released in a systematic manner. He assured employees that Chief Minister Dr Manik Saha had been discussing ways to arrange funds to release the DA and reduce the gap. "We have already taken up the issue with the authorities concerned," he said.
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