Fifteenth Finance Commission Interacts with Chhattisgarh PRIs

The 15^th Finance Commission headed by Chairman, Mr. N.K. Singh alongwith its Members and senior officials met today with the representatives of the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) of Chhattisgarh.

The Commission was informed that all 29 functions of PRIs as envisaged in the 11^th schedule of the Constitution, have been devolved to PRIs in Chhattisgarh and the accounts are maintained upto 2017-18 and audited upto 2016-17.

Chhattisgarh has a total of 11,149 PRIs, of which 27 are Zilla Panchayats, 146 Janpad Panchayats and 10,976 Gram Panchayats.

As per the major recommendations of the   2^ndSFC  (2012-13 to 2016-17) recommended the total devolution of State’s Net Own Tax Revenue as 8.00%, out of which  6.15% to Panchayat Raj Institutions, 1.85% to Urban Local Bodies.

The 14^th Finance Commission had recommended for the period 2015-20, a devolution of Rs. 4719.72 crores to Chhattisgarh as Basic Grant ( 2.62 per cent of total grants) and a devolution of Rs. 524.41 crores as Performance grant ( 2.62 per cent of total grants).

The Commission has observed that:

• 15^th Finance Commission had recommended grants for only gram panchayats out of 3 tiers of PRIs. State Government may be asked to clarify whether it would like to continue this arrangement only for our award period or would like the other two tiers at Block & district level also to be covered.
• In 2016-17 & 2017-18, the own revenue (both own tax revenue & non-tax revenue) of Zila Panchayats and Block Panchayats were negligible