Finance Ministers Meet:Telangana To Skip Again

The second Finance Ministers meeting which is going to held on Monday in Amaravthi,Andhra Pradesh tomorrow(May 7).This time also Telangana has decided to skip this meeting.Telangana had skipped the first meeting held last month in Kerala. While the first meeting was exclusively for southern states, finance ministers from 11 states have been invited for the second meeting in Vijayawada including Telangana.

“The Telangana government is not taking part in the finance ministers’ meeting in Vijayawada on May 7,” finance minister Eatala Rajender told STOI on Saturday evening. 

Since many states have evinced interest and voiced concerns against the recommendations of the 15th Finance Commission, more states have joined the ones from the south to form a joint strategy to take on the Centre on this issue.Kerala finance minister T M Thomas Isaac, who was in Hyderabad last week to participate in the CPM annual conference, had met Eatala Rajender on the latter’s invitation and invited him for the second meeting. However, it was later decided that Telangana will not take part in the Vijayawada meeting.

The main agenda of the Vijayawada meeting is to discuss on the recommendations of the 15 th Finance Commission. According to officials, it has recognised population as an important criterion for distribution of taxes revenue and said it will use data from the 2011 census while making the recommendations for the five-year period beginning from 2020.

Many states are worried on the grounds that such a move will lead to gross injustice to them.