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Question 38 of 60 · Constitutional & Statutory Bodies
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The Chairman of the Fifteenth Finance Commission was:

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Answer: Option B — N.K. Singh

Detailed Solution

Singh. The Fifteenth Finance Commission was constituted in November 2017 under the chairmanship of N.K. Singh, a former bureaucrat and member of the Rajya Sabha.

About N.K. Singh:

  • Nand Kishore Singh is a former IAS officer who served as Revenue Secretary and Expenditure Secretary.
  • He was a member of the Planning Commission and a member of the Rajya Sabha from Bihar.
  • He chaired the committee that reviewed the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act in 2016 and 2017.

Period covered:

  • The Fifteenth Finance Commission first submitted a report for the year 2020-21.
  • Its final report covered the five-year period from 2021-22 to 2025-26.

Main recommendations:

  • The share of states in the divisible pool of central taxes was set at 41 per cent.
  • The reduction from the earlier share was mainly because of the reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir into Union territories.
  • It used new criteria for distributing taxes among states, including population (based on the 2011 census), area, forest and ecology, income distance, demographic performance and tax effort.
  • It recommended revenue deficit grants to states, grants for local bodies, disaster management grants and sector-specific grants.
  • It suggested creating a non-lapsable fund for defence and internal security.

Use of the 2011 census:

  • Earlier Finance Commissions used the 1971 census, but the Fifteenth Finance Commission used the 2011 census.
  • To avoid penalising states that controlled population growth, it added "demographic performance" as a criterion.

Members:

Members included Ajay Narayan Jha, Ashok Lahiri, Anoop Singh and Ramesh Chand.

Sixteenth Finance Commission:

The Sixteenth Finance Commission was constituted in December 2023, under the chairmanship of Arvind Panagariya, for the period from 2026-27 to 2030-31.

Role of the Finance Commission:

It recommends the distribution of taxes between the Centre and states, and grants-in-aid to states.

Why not the other options?

  • ✗Arvind Subramanian was Chief Economic Adviser.
  • ✗Bimal Jalan was a Governor of the RBI.
  • ✗Ashok Lahiri was a member of the Fifteenth Finance Commission, not its chairman.

Quick tip

Remember: 15th Finance Commission = N.K. Singh (states' share 41 per cent); 16th = Arvind Panagariya.

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Constitutional & Statutory Bodies — Preparation

This question tests your understanding of Constitutional & Statutory Bodies, a key topic in the General Knowledge section. The detailed solution above uses a step-by-step approach to show the reasoning, and where available, a shortcut that helps you solve similar questions in under 90 seconds during the actual exam.

This topic covers bodies set up under the Constitution, such as the Election Commission, UPSC, Finance Commission, Comptroller and Auditor General and the national commissions for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and statutory or executive bodies such as NITI Aayog, the NHRC, the CVC, the CBI and Lokpal. Questions often ask whether a body is constitutional or not, which article creates it, who appoints its head and for how long. For example, the CAG is appointed under Article 148, the Finance Commission under Article 280, and NITI Aayog replaced the Planning Commission in 2015 by an executive resolution. Practise the constitutional and statutory bodies questions below, written in the style of the general awareness sections of exams such as SSC, banking, railways, CUET GAT, MAH CET and CLAT. Each question comes with a detailed explanation that adds related facts, so every question helps you revise more than one point.

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