The Government of Gujarat spokesperson for Planning Department today described the Planning Commission’s letter addressed to Gujarat Chief Minister published in certain newspapers is misleading, with distortion of facts and certain facts placed out of context.

While Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with Planning Commission’s Deputy Chairman Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia was held in a very cordial note in New Delhi, the aforesaid letter published as newspaper reports without verification of facts, creates erroneous impressions about Gujarat.

In fact, the letter of May 18, 2010 by the Planning Commission was a standard communication sent to the States before the meeting with the Chief Ministers. The issues mentioned in this communication were first addressed to in an officers’ level meeting and resolved before the meeting with the Chief Minister.

The letter makes no reference about Dr Singh’s heaping praise on Gujarat for its presentation on vision document at the meeting, commending Gujarat’s example to other states and about his announcing enhanced investment clearance for the Narmada Project.

The spokesperson said there is no substance in asking Gujarat to mobilize additional resources to plug the resource gap of Rs.1,622.44-crore. Rather, the Planning Commission estimated the state’s resources at Rs.29,937-crore and yet agreed to a plan size of Rs.30,000-crore instead of State’s own proposal of Rs.29,500-crore. And, for the small resource gap of Rs.63-crore, he agreed to provide onetime additional assistance of Rs.63-crore.

The state’s presentation before the Planning Commission was prepared on the basis of up-to-date statistics, with an advanced estimation of the economy growing at 10.5 percent in 2009-10. As to Gujarat Tax-GDP ratio, the spokesperson said, it is 7.02 percent as to national average of 7.1 percent, and it is not 6.4 percent as the news report claims.

The present state government does not believe in imposing additional tax burden on its citizens unnecessarily, especially when its own revenue at present is sufficient to meet its developmental needs. It must be mentioned here that the State also forgoes substantial tax revenue on account of its prohibition policy to uphold the Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals.

Referring to allocation for Tribal Sub-Plan, the spokesperson said, it remained around 14 percent, and in case of Scheduled Castes the state’s average might appear below the national average because the formula adopted by the Planning Commission does not include the benefits of electricity, drinking water, irrigation projects, roads and the Narmada project going to them.

The spokesperson takes a strong note of the news report’s highly misleading observation on Gujarat’s Human Development Index (HDI). As per a recent independent study by the Sardar Patel Institute of Economic and Social Research, Gujarat has improved its ranking from 6th to 5th, with its HDI in 5h place is identical to Punjab’s 4th place.

During the official level discussions too, the Planning Commission officials expressed satisfaction with the developments in the remote hilly terrains in the Dangs district.