Centre releases Rs 214.54 crore for Assam RLBs for fiscal year 2024-25

Staff Reporter

Guwahati: The central government has released an amount of Rs 214.54 crore to Assam as a Rural Local Bodies Basic Grant (untied) for fiscal year 2024-25.

As per a letter from the Finance Commission Division under the Ministry of Finance (Department of Expenditure), the amount has been released as the first instalment of the Rural Local Bodies (RLBs) Basic Grant.

The grant of Rs 214.54 crore should be utilized for 2192 Gaon Panchayats, 156 Block Panchayats and 27 Zilla Parishads in the state.

According to the letter, the state government's Finance Department has been advised to ensure that the above grant is allocated to General Areas and Excluded Areas, if any (where Parts IX & IXA of the constitution do not apply) within the state using the population of the 2011 Census with a weight of 90% and area with a weight of 10%.

Grants apportioned for General Areas are to be distributed as per the inter-se share finalized for all tiers of Panchayats and distributed within each tier across the state on the basis of accepted recommendations of the latest State Finance Commission (SFC). However, in case of non-availability of SFC's recommendation for distribution, the allocations should be on the basis of population and area in the ratio of 90:10.

Also, that grants apportioned for Excluded Areas (if any) shall be directly transferred by the state Finance Department to the concerned Autonomous District Councils (ADCs)/Village Development Boards (VDBs)/Gram Sabhas (as the case may be) through the concerned administrative departments/nodal departments looking after Panchayati Raj/ADC/VDB matters.

The above basic grants are untied and can be used by the local bodies for location-specific felt needs under the twenty-nine subjects enshrined in the Eleventh Schedule of the Constitution, except for salary or other establishment expenditure. However, expenditure required for auditing of accounts by state government-approved external agencies may be borne from this grant.

 Also Read: Assam to receive Rs 1,283 crore for RLBs from the Centre in 2025-26