Union Home ministry confident of getting back its schemes from states

NEW DELHI: The Union Home Ministry is confident that Finance Ministry would be transferring back the former’s centrally-sponsored schemes from the states soon. A top Home Ministry official, when asked on Saturday whether there had been any movement on MHA’s demand to Finance Ministry to get back the schemes, said the same will happen soon.

“There has to be movement and there will be movement. The four schemes we want back with the MHA are Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS), Special Infrastructure Scheme (SIS) of LWE States, Scheme of Modernization of State Police Forces (MPF) and Counter Insurgency and anti terrorists schools (CIAT). It is a national security issue,” the top MHA official said.

He added that it has been suggested by the Home Ministry to Finance Ministry that the proportion of the central-state proportion of funding of the said schemes may be changed but the schemes must be housed in the MHA. “The present proportion in some of these schemes is 60% funding from Centre and 40% from states. We have suggested – make it 50:50 or even 40:60 in favour of the state.

Let the state allocate 60% of its funds for the centrally sponsored scheme to get the 40% share from us. But you cannot shift the scheme totally (100%) to the states. Capacity building will not happen,” the top MHA official said. Recently, Home Minister Rajnath Singh had also said that he was “positive and hopeful” after his talks with the Prime Minister on this issue.

ET has earlier reported that Union Home Secretary L.C. Goyal had put on record MHAs strong objection to transfer its centrally-sponsored schemes to the states as part of the 14th Finance Commission report, terming the Finance Ministry’s move as “unfortunate” and categorically telling a Parliamentary panel in March that the Home Ministry “was not involved” in this decision.

Goyal had asked the committee to “strongly recommend” that the schemes be retained in MHA by way of some components, so that MHA can take it up with the Ministry of Finance. (MoF). “Only then the MHA would be in a position to use its leverage and instrument with the state governments in getting various security situations managed,” Goyal had told the committee.

The panel agreed completely with Goyal and has asked MoF to reconsider its decision “carefully and judiciously in consultation with various stake holders keeping in mind the prevailing security scenario in the country”, saying in strong words that “in name of financial autonomy to states, national security cannot be compromised.”

“MHA is of the view that if these schemes are not continued, it would be impossible for MHA to ensure involvement of the states in managing internal security situation and also to persuade them to provide adequate resources from the state budget for policing and public order hence, MHA may fall short of discharging its core function of maintenance of internal security in country,” the committee report submitted in April said.