Bharatiya Janata Party national president Amit Shah on Saturday warned that the “misinformation campaign” against the Centre’s fiscal policy on devolution of tax revenue among the States posed a “threat to the country’s integrity.”
Referring to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s charge that the BJP government at the Centre was discriminating against southern States by allocating to Karnataka a disproportionately lesser sum than its contribution to the Central tax kitty, Mr. Shah said the Union government expenditure is also to be borne from the same pool of financial resources collected from different States under a federal structure.
“Who will bear the expenses of the military, the country’s embassies around the world, expenditure of running Parliament, printing currency, running RBI. Where else will you bring the funds for running a federal State?” Mr. Shah asked. He termed the allegation of discrimination against southern States an outcome of “petty-minded” politics.
Reacting to Mr. Siddaramaiah’s oft-repeated charge that the Centre failed to waive loans of Karnataka farmers from nationalised banks, Mr. Shah said the governments of BJP-ruled States had borne the burden of waiving loans that farmers had taken from nationalised banks. Whether in Uttar Pradesh or Maharashtra, it is the BJP-ruled State governments, which had waived loans.
When it was brought to his notice that the Centre had waived farm loans amounting to ₹77,000 crore taken from nationalised banks during the tenure of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Mr. Shah said the spate of suicides by farmers continued even after the loan waiver by the Centre. Hence, the Modi government has announced a minimum support price of one-and-a-half times the input costs for a crop grown by farmers, he said.
