Madhya Pradesh's appeal for Central assistance of Rs 1,500 crore for the drought-hit State, it was alleged, had found no takers in New Delhi. Not a single paisa had been given, complained Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Gujarat's Narendra Modi accused the Centre of playing spoilsport to his initiative of setting up the first university dedicated to children, by taking away 200 MW quota of power supply without notice. A common refrain of the Chief Ministers, along with Rajasthan and Uttarakhand, was that not a single brick had been added to the proposed Medical Institutes (AIIMS) in their States in the past four years. In sharp contrast, the NDA had chosen four Congress-ruled states out of a total of six wherein the AIIMS was to be set up. Not just that. The NDA has also decided to exploit the UPA's discrimination against its states in Parliament, when it meets later this month.

Ironically the UPA also came in for a scathing attack by its ally, the CPM. At its 19th Congress in Coimbatore on Saturday last, the CPM asked the Left-ruled states to launch a joint offensive to against increasing encroachment by the Centre into the states' powers and for "belying all expectations" on improving Centre-state relations. West Bengal Chief Minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who led the attack, accused the Centre of having failed to implement any recommendation of the Sarkaria Commission. He also charged the Centre of "doing nothing" to provide safeguards against the abuse of Article 356 of the Constitution and of misinterpreting Article 355 to unilaterally send Central forces to the States. The Centre was also indicted for its latest "assault" on the decision-making powers of the States. New Delhi was now directly discussing State subjects with the IMF, World Bank, WTO etc and imposing the agencies' conditionalities without seeking the States' concurrence .The UPA has yet to respond to the unprecedented attack by the CPM.

Insaf