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NDRF aid only for severe calamities
News:
- The Union government has declared the Kerala floods a “calamity of severe nature”.
Important facts:
2. According to the National Disaster Management Policy, the State governments have to provide disaster relief from their respective State Disaster Response Funds (SDRFs).
3. While for a “calamity of severe nature” additional assistance is provided from the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF).
4. There is no provision in the law or rules for the government to designate a disaster as a “national calamity”.
5. Funding of NDRF and SDRFs:
- The NDRF is funded through a National Calamity Contingent Duty levied on pan masala, chewing tobacco and cigarettes, and with budgetary provisions as and when needed.
- There is also provision to encourage any person or institution to contribute to the NDRF. However, this source of funding has not been tapped so far.
- The 14th Finance Commission recommended changes to this structure once the cess was discontinued or subsumed within the GST.
- However, the government decided to continue with the National Calamity Contingent Duty even in the GST regime.
- The SDRF corpus is contributed by the Union government and the respective State governments in a 75:25 ratio for general category States and 90:10 for Special Category States.
- The allocation of the SDRF for each State is done by the Finance Commission and the Centre contributes its specified share each financial year.
- The Centre share of SDRF is released in two equal installments.
- Allocation of funds in the recent past:
- In 2017-18, the Union government released NDRF funds to nine States — Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Nagaland, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana — over and above its contributions to their respective SDRFs.
- Karnataka was the highest recipient of the fund.
