KARACHI, Dec 7: Abdul Karim Lodhi, who represented Sindh as a private and non-statutory member on the National Finance Commission (NFC) for about four years , announced his resignation from the commission on Tuesday after declaring that "the NFC has been unfortunately reduced to no more than a handmaiden of the central government".

"It is not the independent entity that the Constitution decreed it to be," Mr Lodhi said about the NFC at a press conference. He read out a five-page statement which was virtually a 'charge-sheet' against the centre's attitude towards the provinces.

Mr Lodhi, a retired bureaucrat who also served as Sindh's chief secretary, was unaware that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz had held a dinner for the finance ministers of the four provinces on Monday evening for an informal discussion on NFC issues.

"The NFC meetings so far have been an assemblage of two sets of adversaries," he said, recalling his four-year association with the commission. According to him, "one is the giver" - a reference to the federal finance minister who is the chairman of the NFC and the sole representative of the centre - "and though the other side is as weighty as eight (four finance ministers and four private members of the provinces), they are supplicant dwarfed, not so much by the weight of the finance minister, as his imposing large back-up force of at least 12 substantial stalwarts and the half-a-century-old culture of this being a beggar's moot".

Mr Lodih's contention was that under Article 160 of the Constitution, the NFC had been asked to recommend distribution of proceeds of the divisible pool between the federation and the provinces, making of grants in aid by the federal government to the provincial governments and exercise by the federal and the provincial governments of the borrowing power conferred by the constitution.

In actual practice, he said, the NFC did not deliberate upon the distribution of taxes between the federation and the provinces. The finance ministry informs the NFC of a certain amount being the share of the provinces. "From thereon, the provinces commence their begging of the finance ministry to increase their shares," he added.

"The constitutional duty to stipulate as to what shall be the share of the federal government and that of the provinces is completely denied to the commission," he said.

"This mode of working, witnessed by me for last four years, and known to have existed over the past four decades at least, diminishes the NFC into no more than a tool in the hands of the finance ministry."

Mr Lodhi was of the view that the issue of grants in aid by the federal government to the provinces was not a prerogative of the finance ministry, but something to be discussed and recommended by the NFC. Similarly, it is for the NFC to recommend the limits of borrowing of the federation and the provinces.

In another context, Mr Lodhi recalled the last meeting of the NFC in which the federal government pleaded to retain more taxes with itself because of a manifold increase in expenditure on the civil administration.

"For several years Sindh has been urging the centre to reduce and ultimately wind up those ministries whose subjects are outside the federal list," he pointed out.

He also mentioned a few instances in which Sindh was denied the resource share after it had been pledged by Islamabad, and made it clear that in no country of the world was population the only criterion for the distribution of resources.

"The provinces do not find themselves to be members of a federal relationship. Even their petty chore is orchestrated by Islamabad," he remarked, saying that he was resigning before any meeting of the NFC had been called to facilitate timely appointment of a member from Sindh in his place.