Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, June 5: People’s Democratic Party (PDP) presented memorandum to the 14th Finance Commission in a meeting here.
A party spokesman said that two member team from the party comprising of Naeem Akhtar, chief spokesperson and Peerzada Mansoor Hussain, MLA, raised the issue about treating J&K a special category State given its unique constitutional special status in the country.
J&K’s unique constitutional special status must be reflected in its fiscal transfers. It is not merely a special category State decided by an executive order of the National Development Council like other special category states. J&K’s special status is enshrined in the Constitution of India.
They also raised the issue of hydropower and demanded that the State should get rentals of its waters that are used for national hydro generation, and the profit made by the Centre out of J&K’s waters must be shared with the state, the spokesman added.
“National Hydro Policy 2008 must be amended to make it revenue sharing oriented like “Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957. J&K should get rentals for its waters that are used for national hydro generation. These should be in the form of resource rents, defined by the surplus return above the value of capital, labour, materials and energy used to exploit water resources. It can be seen as a resource rent tax to bring it within the ambit of the FFC. The profits made by hydro-based PSUs (and other resource based PSUs) become a part of the divisible pool. As it stands today, Central Government gets the entire share of revenue “indirectly” from these resources. The Centre has been milking these “water cows”, in various ways, including getting high dividends. This must be shared with the state. The objective should be to have a 50:50 distribution of indirect revenues emanating from natural resources”.
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