Acknowledgments 10 AKR thanks Professors D. Neuhauser, S. I. Chu and B. M. Deb for encouragement, support and useful discussions. It is a pleasure to thank Dr. E. Proynov for his comments. agreement with the literature data. The observed absolute per cent deviation in the term energies between our XC calculations and the correlated results in the literature remains within 0.007-0.171% only, and is mostly attributable to our current inadequate knowledge of the delicate correlation effects in these strongly-correlated systems, besides the fact that the presently employed LYP potential was designed primarily for the ground states. Construc- tion of the exact many-body correlation functional has been one of the most forefront areas of DFT ever since its rejuvenation in the works of Kohn-Sham in 1964 and unfortunately still remains one of the most important unresolved issues in DFT. However, even though its exact form remains elusive, many accurate forms have been proposed over the decades suitable for different processes in atoms, molecules, solids. Note that this is a single-determinantal approach and is far more simpler to implement compared to the benchmark sophisticated and elaborate CI or multiconfiguration type formalisms within the traditional wave function based methodologies; yet as our results indicate, this can lead to quite good-quality results, which of course is the appeal and usefulness of DFT-based methods. At this stage, we note that, success of such a relatively simpler method on the present and previous atomic excited states done before, e.g., in [23, 24, 27, 28], may encourage one to explore its validity and applicability for other physical and chemical systems such as molecules. While this could lead to an attractive and direct route towards molecular excited states, as discussed earlier, (see for example, [27] and references therein), a straightforward extension is difficult; as it relies on the tacit assumption of spherical symmetry in the density, which is not the case for molecules. Finally, while the LYP correlation potential employed has provided rather excellent results for the present inherently correlated systems and in past studies, neverthe- less it is unclear whether the non-dynamical correlation contribution is described by LYP properly or for these states such contributions are small. No definitive answer is possible and more detailed and sophisticated studies would be required for this. In conclusion, we have proposed an accurate and reliable method for the excited states of negative atoms within the framework of DFT.