Finance minister Arun Jaitley has said that 15th Finance commissions’ terms of references are not against any region of the country.

In his Facebook post, the Finance minister said that the Finance Commissions recommendations are based on the assessment of states’ ‘needs’ on rational and equitable basis.

FCs use appropriate criteria based on population proxies and relative poverty of people to assess true needs of respective states.

The ToR recognises the efforts of all the States which have done well in population control. This specific ToR would allow the 15th FC to propose a specific incentive Scheme to reward the States which have achieved a replacement level of population growth.

There is no inherent bias or mandate in the ToRs of the 15th FC which can be construed as discriminatory against the States which made good progress in population control.The 14th FC rightly used the 2011 census population and It allocated 10% weight to 2011 population. Later the commission recommended allocation of 42% share in the Central Taxes to the States.