A parliamentary committee has asked AYUSH Ministry to state in "unambiguous" terms whether it has any proposal to do away with the existing distinction between special and non-special category states for centrally sponsored schemes.
The government had failed to allay concerns expressed by the committee earlier regarding such a proposal, it said.
This was stated by the department related to Parliamentary Standing Committeee on Health and Family Welfare in its 91st report on action taken by government on recommendations contained in the 84th report on demands for grants 2015-16 of the AYUSH Ministry.
"The committee is constrained to state that the action taken reply does not allay the concerns expressed by the committee regarding a proposal of the government to do away with the distinction between special category and non special category states as it has not touched upon the issue.
"The Ministry has simply chosen to state the existing distinction between states for the purpose of disbursement of grant-in-aid which the committee is well aware of. The committee would like the Ministry to state in unambigous terms whether there is any proposal to do away with the existing distinction between special category and non-special category states," the committee chaired by Ram Gopal Yadav said.
The committee in its earlier recommendation had said that
if this proposal is implemented, the 11 special category states who depend heavily on the central sector funds for plan schemes will be hit hard as they will end up spending much more than ten per cent and face huge shortfall in their expenditure for health.
In the action taken report, the government had earlier said that under centrally sponsored schemes of national AYUSH mission, there is distinction between states in respect of components of AYUSH services, educational institutions and quality control of ASU&H drugs for special category states (NE and three hilly states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir).
It had said that grant-in-aid component is 90 per cent from the Central government and remaining ten per cent is proposed to be state contribution towards all components of the scheme. For other states/UTs, the sharing pattern is 75:25 per cent, it had said.
It had also said that for medicinal plants, the component is 100 per cent by central government in NE states and Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir while in other states, the ratio is 90:10 between Centre and states.
