First meeting of 15th finance commission takes off

New Delhi: The newly-constituted 15th Finance Commission held first meeting and decided to involve think-tanks in drawing up its report that will primarily deal with devolution of revenue between the Centre and states.

The Meeting was held under the Chairmanship of NK Singh and was attended by all the other Members of the Commission i.e. Shaktikanta Das and Anoop Singh, as well as the part time Members Ashok Lahiri and Ramesh Chand.

"The Commission was cognisant that it has been assigned wide-ranging ToR which needed to be suitably addressed. Towards this objective, it was felt that wide-ranging consultations with all stakeholders, including various ministries of the Union government, all state governments, local bodies, panchayats and political parties of each state government, needed to be expeditiously initiated," a government release said.

The Commission held preliminary discussions on the terms of reference for the Fifteenth Finance Commission. Its terms of reference also include proposing measurable performance-based incentives for states on efforts made by them in various fields including expansion and deepening of tax net under GST, achievements in implementation of flagship central schemes and disaster resilient infrastructure, reaching sustainable development goals, and quality of expenditure.

It was keen to seek academic inputs and inter-actions with leading Think Tanks and domain knowledge experts which would assist the Commission in its work. It also approved the setting-up of its office at Jawahar Vyapar Bhawan in New Delhi.