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Unreasonable to limit borrowing, can’t meet expenses: EPS to PM

Chief Minister Edappadi on Monday urged the Centre to help the Tamil Nadu government by increasing additional borrowing limit beyond 3 per cent of GSDP due to significant shortfall in revenues following lockdown imposed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unreasonable to limit borrowing, can’t meet expenses: EPS to PM
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Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami

Chennai

In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Palaniswami said there are additional commitments for the State and opposed the idea of removing free power to farmers.“It is unreasonable to attach conditionalities for borrowings beyond 3 per cent of Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP). Aggressively pushing a reform agenda on which a consensus is yet to be developed, at a time when States have approached the Centre for additional borrowing out of sheer desperation, is not in keeping with the spirit of co-operative federalism,” the letter read. “Linking the Central government’s power under Article 293(3) of the Constitution to permit additional borrowing by the States to conditionalities, is unprecedented,” he said, noting that these are not grants from the Centre.

“To attach needlessly demanding conditionalities to the additional borrowing requirements appears to be unreasonable,” he added.The letter also reiterated that the State’s policy under which the free power supply to farmers should not be removed and that the Tamil Nadu government strongly opposed the idea.“It has been our stand that the mode of disbursement of subsidy should be left to the State governments themselves. Since a consensus is yet to emerge on these issues, I request you to instruct the concerned Ministries to remove the requirements to reform the power sector from amongst the proposed conditionalities and also to allow greater latitude to States in implementing a reform agenda,” the Cheif Minister stated.The letter comes a day after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a slew of measures to revive the economy.

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