NEW DELHI, Jan 16:
Giving fiscal powers to panchayats to make them autonomous will be the focus of a two-day workshop to be attended by representatives from the Centre and the states from Monday with the government flagging the “urgent need to vest them with adequate tax and non-tax powers”.
The workshop, to be inaugurated by Union Minister of Panchayati Raj, Rural Development and Drinking Water and Sanitation Birender Singh, will discuss “Fiscal Decentralisation and the Role of State Finance Commissions”.
Chairpersons and members of all the functional State Finance Commissions, Secretaries of Panchayati Raj and Finance Departments from states and eminent national and international experts on fiscal decentralisation and devolution to local governments have been invited to the conference.
Former Members of the Union Finance Commissions have also been invited to share ideas and experiences of the national and international best practices and promote cross learning across the states, an official statement said.
The 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution have provided constitutional status to Panchayats, Municipalities to function as local self-government institutions.
The Constitution also provides for states to devolve, through legislation, functions to these institutions as illustrated in the Eleventh and Twelfth Schedules of the Constitution for rural and urban local bodies, respectively.
The statement said that while the states have generally assigned most of these functions to panchayati raj institutions, the corresponding devolution of funds and functionaries remains a critical issue. Since the own source revenues of the local bodies being very small, they largely depend on the devolution of funds from the central and the state governments and Finance Commissions, the government said.
Flagging that there is an “urgent need to vest the Panchayats, with adequate tax and non-tax powers”, the government said that at the same time it also needs to be ensure that the fiscal powers given are effectively exercised since generating own revenue is the best way to increase autonomy, credibility and accountability of the Panchayats.
“Fiscal decentralisation, therefore, needs to be viewed as a comprehensive system of strengthening the financial resource base of the Panchayats so that the assignment of expenditure functions is matched with devolution of funds,” the statement said. (PTI)
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