Nirmala Sitharaman, the minister of finance, said that the centre might be thinking about giving Jammu and Kashmir statehood again, ANI reported.
At Cooperative Federalism: The Path Toward Atma Nirbhar Bharat, an event on centre-state relations, she remarked, “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.”
When discussing the Center’s allocation of funds to the states in accordance with the 14th Finance Commission’s recommendations, she made this statement.
The Minister of Finance remarked, “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. Because of this, at this time, when we are talking about cooperative federalism.”
She asserted that gaining the confidence of the general public was priority one and that no state could differ in this regard.
Added the Finance Minister that there is absolutely no chance that the funds will be used for anything other than the common good. As a result, the final phrase was Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas, and Sabka Prayas.
The Indian government bifurcated J&K into the two centrally-administrated union territories (UTs) of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, which meant that J&K was no more a state.
A presidential decree that repealed Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and subtly altered Article 370 of the Indian Constitution came before the bill’s introduction.
