A day before the Union Budget, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah launched the ‘Justice for Karnataka – Fair Share, Strong Federalism’ campaign and unveiled nine posters highlighting the state’s long-standing demands, including the restoration of the tax share reduced from 4.71% to 3.64% in central tax devolution.
Other key demands include fixing the “flawed formula” of penalizing development and population control and resuming the use of 1971 population data in tax sharing, reducing the weighting of income distance from 45% to 25%, setting an “unrealistic GSDP base year methodology” as IT exports inflate state GSDP and distort fair comparisons.
The government has proposed to adopt Panchayat decentralization index in allocation of funds for effective administration in local governments. It also sought a special package of ₹10,000 crore for the backward Kalyana region of Karnataka, special grants for ecology, farmers and irrigation projects and increasing the state’s share of taxes to 50% and a ceiling on cess to 5% are among the demands.
In a note, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said the government had submitted its “constitutionally based” demands to the 16th Finance Commission seeking fairness in tax decentralization and fiscal federalism and expressed hope that the budget would fulfill them.
Published – 31 Jan 2026 21:47 IST
