Nagaland fails to land urban local body performance funds

Only 9 states eligible for center’s incentive

EMN
Dimapur, July 24

Nagaland has not ‘claimed’ the grant for Performance Grants of Urban Local Bodies during 2014-2015 with six other states.
Only nine of 29 states in the country were found eligible for the Performance Grants of Urban Local Bodies during 2014-2015, Minister of State for Urban Development and Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation Babul Supriyo told the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
This reporter accessed information from central sources including webcasts and parliamentary proceedings of the Rajya Sabha on Friday, July 24.
The minister told the upper house that these nine states were granted ‘performance grant’ of Rs.457.91 crore in accordance with the recommendations of the 13th Finance Commission.
The minister said that seven states “did not claim the grant”. The state that did not ‘claim’ the grant are Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Odisha, and Tripura.
Mizoram is the only north eastern state that made it among the nine states to qualify for the Performance Grant of Urban Local Bodies. The states that received Performance Grant of Urban Local Bodies are Uttar Pradesh, which received a grant of Rs.146.46 crore; Madhya Pradesh at Rs.74.11 crore, Rajasthan at Rs.59.23 crore, Andhra Pradesh at Rs.47.76 crore, Telangana at Rs.47.41 crore, Kerala at Rs.36.02 crore, Haryana at Rs.21.58 crore, Chattisgarh at Rs.20.68 crore, and Mizoram state, which received a grant of Rs.4.66 crore of the special grants.
Likewise, 13 states met the nine ‘Essential Criteria for Performance Grant’ as stipulated by the 13th Finance Commission only partially in the range of 1 to 8.
The states that met the criteria are Karnataka, Maharashtra and Punjab which met 8 of the 9 criteria; Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand standing at 6, Assam and Jammu & Kashmir at 5, Sikkim at 3, and Tamil Nadu at 2 while West Bengal and Goa met only one of the 9 essential criteria stipulated by the commission.
Conditions stipulated by the 13th Finance Commission to qualify for Performance Grant of Urban Local Bodies
• Ensuring a separate supplement to the budget documents for Urban Local Bodies and ensuring accounting as per National Municipal Accounts Manual
• Tabling in State Legislatures the Annual Report of the Director of Local Fund Audit in respect of ULBs
• Appointment of an Ombudsman for elected functionaries and officials of all ULBs
• Electronic transfer of grants to ULBs within five days of their receipt from the central government
• Enactment stipulating qualifications for appointment as Members of State Finance Commission;
• Empowering ULBs to levy property tax
• Putting in place a state level Property Tax Board along with annual work plan
• State governments shall notify by March 31 every year service level benchmarks in respect of Water supply, Sewerage, Storm water drainage and Solid waste management
• All Municipal Corporations with a population of above 10 lakh (2001 Census) shall put in place a fire hazard response and mitigation plan.