Jammu, Mar 25: Former Deputy Chief Minister, Muzaffar Baig today hoped that the chief minister would review the criteria for sanctioning additionalities to various districts.
 Intervening during the reply on a question by MLA Choudhary Zulfikar Ahmed about the criteria adopted by the government to allocate additionalities, Baig listed the situations in which the Chief Minister could use discretion while allocating additionalities.
 He said the rules provide for a discretionary fund with Prime Minister and Chief Ministers which they could allocate in certain situations at their discretion.
 He however, said even than Chief Minister was not a king and while giving away funds, he had to ensure that these were used judiciously and quoted the observations of the Supreme Court that “Government is guided by public interest and informed by reason”. 
 He also rejected the observation of his party member A R Veeri who said the funds were being looted on the name of additionalities. Baig said the funds were never looted, but used for development. He said funds should be given only on the demand of public representatives and not any other person.
 He said while giving away funds, CM shall have to consider equity demands from backward areas, to meet expenses on social infrastructure and consideration that the utilization benefits maximum number of population.
 Earlier, Zulifkar Ahmed expressed dissatisfaction with the reply on his question by minister of state for finance and planning Dr Manohar Lal who said that the additionalities were allocated generally to meet the expenses on account of land acquisition for projects, demands put forth by DBB members and shortfall in centrally sponsored schemes.

Lastupdate on : Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Fri, 26 Mar 2010 00:00:00 IST