NDRF aid only for severe calamities

NDRF aid only for severe calamities

News:

1. 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 14^th 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.