15th Finance Commission Chairman NK Singh submitted his report to the President for the period from 2021-22 to 2025-26. During this, the member of the Commission Ajay Narayan Jha, Prof. Anoop Singh, Dr. Ashok Lahiri and Dr. Ramesh Chand and Commission Secretary Arvind Mehta were also present.
As per the terms of reference, it was mandatory for the Commission to submit its recommendations from 2021-22 to 2025-26 i.e. for a period of five years from 30 October 2020. Last year, the Commission presented its report for the year 2020-21. Which was accepted by the Central Government and this report was placed on the floor of the Parliament on 30 January 2020.
The Commission was asked to give its recommendations on a number of specific and broad issues in its terms of reference. Apart from tax deviations, local government grants, disaster management grants, the commission was also asked to examine and recommend performance incentives of states in many areas such as power sector, adoption of DBT, solid waste management.
Asked the Commission to examine whether a separate mechanism should be put in place to finance defense and internal security and if so, how such a mechanism could be operated. In this report to be submitted to the Central Government, the Commission has sought to dispose of all its terms of reference.
This report has been prepared in four sections. In section-1 and section-2, the main report under the past and its accompanying annexures are attached. Section-3 is dedicated to the Central Government and it examines in-depth the major departments with medium-term challenges and roadmap ahead. Section 4 is completely dedicated to the states.
The Commission has analyzed the finances of each state with great depth and has shown state-specific deliberations to address the key challenges facing each state.
This report will be available in the public sector once it is presented to Parliament by the Central Government, along with the explanatory memorandum and action taken report on the recommendations contained in this report.
