Dismantling Planning Commission will make states overdependent on Centre: CPI(M)

NEW DELHI: "Decommissioning" of the Planning Commission by the BJP-led government is fraught with political danger as it would promote a unitary system of governance by making all states "over-dependent" on the Centre for their finances, CPI(M) said today.

Observing that "the cat is out of the bag" from the Prime Minister's recent power-point presentation to chief ministers, senior party leader Sitaram Yechury said "all future flow of funds from the Centre to the states will be through the central ministries, reducing the states as mere dependencies - 'vassal states'.

"Such over-dependence on the Centre is a clear demonstration of moving towards a centralised unitary state structure, the exact opposite of our constitutional scheme of things and its federal structure."

In an editorial for CPI(M) organ 'People's Democracy' titled "Planning De-Commissioned", Yechury said the dismantling of the plan panel was "not merely an exercise confined to the domain of economics. It is pregnant with political danger to transform the Indian republic."

"It is such a unitary structure which facilitates the advance towards the RSS version of 'Hindu Rashtra' at the expense of undermining the secular democratic character of our republic where, instead of improving centre-state relations in favour of the states, the exact opposite would be the purpose and result," he said.

Such a move by the Narendra Modi government would "only accentuate the socio-economic disparities in our country alarmingly" and jettison the goals of economic equality, social justice and regional economic imbalances, Yechury said.

"This is fraught with the dangers of growing demands for separation from the existing states by regions who consider themselves 'backward'" and create "an increasingly polarised situation," he said.