Who will bell revadi cat? EC to Niti, Finance to RBI, why hands tied | India News,The Indian Express
The Indian Express spoke to key officials in the Union Ministry of Finance; state Finance Ministers; Election Commission of India, Fifteenth Finance Commission, Niti Aayog, the Reserve Bank of India, and the Comptroller and Auditor General and found a consensus on three key issues.
WHO will bell the cat? This is the question and the refrain in the highest echelons of the bureaucracy as it looks at dire state economic data and plans on how to respond to the Supreme Court’s prod for suggestions in the wake of the Prime Minister’s flagging the politics of freebies (revadi).
The Indian Express spoke to key officials in the Union Ministry of Finance; state Finance Ministers; Election Commission of India, Fifteenth Finance Commission, Niti Aayog, the Reserve Bank of India, and the Comptroller and Auditor General and found a consensus on three key issues.
One, both the Centre and the states have been liberal with handouts — support to poor by a state is called a freebie by Centre, and vice versa. Two, existing laws and mandates do not allow ECI, CAG, Niti Aayog, and the Finance Commission to step in.
And, three, the Centre is wary that any unilateral curbs on states will allow political leaders there to blame Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not letting them “do good” for the people.
ECI officials said it would be an “overreach” of laws governing the poll body to regulate decisions of winning political parties. For the Finance Commission whose main responsibility is to decide on sharing of resources between the Centre and states, its terms of reference will need a substantive expansion. This will be seen as impinging on the federal structure of the polity. RBI’s dominant focus as well as its mandate is controlling inflation, and Niti Aayog is more of a think tank now.
Rating: 5