15th Finance Commission may have NITI Aayog representative

NEW DELHI: NITI Aayog could have a representative in the 15th Finance Commission, which is likely to be constituted in 2018, following the recommendations of a parliamentary standing committee. Since the Aayog is coordinating between the Centre and the states, it makes sense for one of its top officials to be the member of the next commission, just as the erstwhile Planning Commission did, a senior government official told ET on condition of anonymity.

“However, the Aayog is yet to take a call on whether it will be the vice chairman or one of its members who will represent states in the 15th Finance Commission,” the official said. The standing committee in a recently released report recommended that the vice chairman or a member of NITI Aayog be made ex-officio member of the Finance Commission as part of the proposed structured relationship between the two bodies.

This, the committee said, would be required in a scenario where the distinction between plan and non-plan heads is dispensed with. “Developing a structured collaborative relationship with the Finance Commission will be reunited to recommend resource transfers to the states based inter-alia on the National Plan,” the report said.

While recommending that the onerous exercise of distribution of central funds between the Centre and the states, and among the states inter-se including determination of appropriate criteria for the same should be entrusted to the commission, the committee said that in the process the Aayog may be empowered to collaborate with the Finance Commission.

“The state finance commissions may also be made an integral part of this process,” it said. The 13th and the 14th Finance Commission had members of the erstwhile Planning Commission as its part-time members. While BK Chaturvedi represented states in the 13th commission (2010-2015), Abhijit Sen was part of the 14th commission (2015-2020). Anew Finance Commission has traditionally been constituted two years before the completion of the term of the previous commission. If the trend continues, the 15th commission is likely to be constituted by 2018.

NITI Aayog was set up in January last year to replace the erstwhile Planning Commission to help evolve a shared vision of national development priorities and foster cooperative federalism, in sync with the stated view of the BJP-led NDA government that strong states make a strong nation.