FM Sitharaman drops hint that govt is considering restoring state status to J and K

New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday dropped a hint that Centre is considering restoring state status to Jammu and Kashmir.

During the event of Centre-state relations — Cooperative Federalism: The Path Towards Atma Nirbhar Bharat, she said, “Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi fully accepted the Finance Commission (report) and that is why today states get 42 per cent of the amount (tax collected) — now reduced by 41 per cent because J&K (Jammu and Kashmir) is no longer a state. It will soon become… may be some time.” She was saying this while talking about the distribution of funds to the states by the Centre as per the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission. The Finance Minister said, “I am serving them transparently without corruption. That doesn’t differentiate between states and the states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or any other parties. All the people should have trust in the government, by the power in them and the power in us, That’s the line that the Prime Minister always promotes and therefore in this time, when we are discussing cooperative federalism.”

She said the first was to win the trust of the common people and in that no state could have a difference.
On people’s trust, she said, “You can’t say Modi, you are doing this wrongly because the state government doesn’t approve of this method. There’s nothing in this to be disapproved of. And therefore, the approach of the prime minister having been a chief minister is to win the trust of a person, not just by getting appointed but in everything that he does.”

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The Finance Minister also said, “The money you pay for tax is as worthy for me as the money in my own pocket. I have to utilise it to the maximum for the common cause. There’s no way the money is getting spent on anything else except definitely for the common cause. So in this, even as a move, the last one of the slogans: Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas, Sabka Prayas.”

She said, “That is why the approach of the government is to empower a citizen, give him his basic house, give him his toilet, give him the opportunities he needs, let him be accessible to a bank, give him a small amount of loans to run his own business and for that let him not do any attestation from the district collector or some government official. Let him also not pledge that little gold that his wife might have and even if he doesn’t have, search for him someone who can give him a guarantee. Most of the schemes like mudra all have government guarantee in it.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by HW News staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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