SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir government on Friday said that Rs 3156 crore have been allocated in budget 2023-24 to help in transforming JK’s agriculture and allied sectors in order to increase farmer income, ensure food security and accelerate UT’s economic growth.
A Holistic Agriculture Development Plan has been rolled out with 29 proposed projects worth an outlay of Rs 5012 crore to be implemented over a period of next 5 years.
An official said that the novel initiative will create additional job opportunities for 2,87,910 people in agriculture, horticulture and allied sectors besides 18,861 new business enterprises will be created over the period of next five years.
Under the ambitious project, the government will create 67000 Metric Ton CA Storage Capacity enabling the farmers store their produce for better returns.
Jammu and Kashmir government is encouraging and aiding private players to set up cold storage (CA) facilities in order to reduce post harvest losses by increasing the shelf life of various agriculture and horticulture products, as well as to address the issue of distressed crop sales by farmers.
The government has taken several concrete steps to increase agriculture and horticulture production besides improving crop quality with a special emphasis on post-harvesting management infrastructure particularly in the private sector.
The UT administration has launched a Rs 46.65 crore `Promotion of Beekeeping’ project to triple the honey production over the next 5 years.
Monitoring and traceability will be done through GI labs besides 20 Custom Hiring Centers (CHCs) will also be established for extending pollination facilities. ‘Jammu and Kashmir will have a full-fledged center of excellence for constancy, capacity building and post-harvest management,” said the official.
Under the project, the value addition of honey is also being envisioned coupled with efficient growth of bee sector using native honey bees.
To make Fish farming a prosperous sector, the UT government has approved a Rs. 176 crore project to boost fish production. The project involves importing genetically improved fish seed, upgrading existing hatcheries and fish rearing units, introducing species diversity in aquaculture through R&D and commercializing trout and carp fish production using modern technologies such as RAS and Biofloc and is estimated to double trout and carp production over the next five years.
Similarly, dairy is the biggest component of livestock husbandry and plays a pivotal role in sustaining agriculture income and acts as a growth engine for agriculture, allied sectors in J&K.
The milk production is expected to reach 45 Lakh MTs from 25 Lakh MTs over next five years and will be achieved through a range of measures including expansion of breeding coverage and increasing per animal productivity.
One of the key elements of the Dairy under HADP project is to increase per-animal productivity from 2400 litre to 4300 litre, which is a significant increase. This will be achieved through a range of interventions including the expansion of Artificial Insemination (AI) centers from 1389 to 2189.
At a moment when many are looking to Hochul to unite Democrats in New York, fearing disaster in 2024, the governor is having the opposite effect. Progressives from New York City, who largely control the state Legislature, feel emboldened to push a left-leaning agenda after a decade of strong-arm tactics from ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo. And Hochul, long a moderate, is struggling to advance priorities that include tough-on-crime policies and making the state more affordable.
It’s a volatile mix that’s left the governor with limited political capital and her party as splintered as it has been in years.
“I wish she would listen to the voters and not the high rollers,” state Sen. Jessica Ramos (D-Queens), a leading progressive and chair of the Senate Labor Committee, said in an interview, adding that Hochul is being influenced by corporate interests who helped her raise a state record $50 million for her election.
Hochul still has the power to shape budget negotiations in coming days and weeks since she holds the purse strings ahead of the April 1 start of the fiscal year. New York lawmakers typically wrap most major legislative proposals into the state budget each year, so winning support for her agenda will be her highest priority as discussions wrap, likely in April if a deal isn’t reached in the next few days.
Hochul has struggled all year to get traction in the Legislature. She got rolled by Democrats in the state Senate last month when they resoundingly rejected her pick, Hector LaSalle, to be the state’s top judge — a first-of-its-kind rebuke by lawmakers who deemed him too moderate for their taste.
Hochul’s trying a new tactic this month by aligning herself with former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who is pumping $5 million into ads and mailers in lawmakers’ districts to boosther priorities. While the move will certainly put pressure on lawmakers worried about how their constituents will view the messages, it’s also serving to anger fellow Democrats who think the mailers cross a line.
“What’s she’s doing is weaponizing her identity and allowing billionaires to use her to continue the same old Albany politics,” Assemblymember Ron Kim (D-Queens) said at a news conference last week referencing Hochul’s status as the first woman governor.
Hochul appears ready to dig in on her priorities, looking to beat back opposition to toughening bail laws on violent suspects and making the high-cost state more affordable by forcing new housing in the suburbs.
She also wants to show that she’s got a firm grip on her office as she looks to set the tone at the Capitol for her four-year term and takes the reins of a divided state Democratic Party after succeeding Cuomo, who resigned in 2021.
Democratic values get “clouded” when “people from the socialist side” say they represent what the party stands for, Hochul said.
“My job is to bring it together, instill confidence in voters in the Democratic Party and go forth into a whole new era,” the governor said earlier this month, when asked by POLITICO about the party’s future.
Some New York City Democrats are still calling for the resignation of state party chairman Jay Jacobs, who lost all four House seats in his Long Island backyard and is fighting with liberals by blasting them as too far left for the state as a whole.
“There is a concerted, clear and definite unrelenting effort by folks from the far left to unseat moderate, progressive incumbents,” Jacobs said in a recent interview. “And it’s all about power.”
Jacobs said that, if the Legislature keeps pushing the party further left, it will alienate moderate voters in the suburbs and upstate — which, he said, was the reason Republicans flipped four House seats on Long Island, in the Hudson Valley and upstate.
“The people who abandoned the Democratic Party, for the most part, abandoned the Democratic Party because they felt that our party has moved too far to the left,” he continued. “The more we continue to do that, the more voters in these areas we will lose.”
So far, Hochul has stood by Jacobs, but his presence continues to irk liberals. Some groups said Hochul needs to make New York a progressive capital in the nation to counter Republicans in Washington and in red states.
“The governor in the last election struggled to communicate most directly with voters, and now this is a movement in the budget to say: message received,” said Sochie Nnaemeka, the director of the labor-backed Working Families Party.
Some Democrats said it’s important that the party find common ground heading into 2024, when all 26 House seats and 213 state legislative seats will be on the ballot again.
“We have to take back the House in 2024. We need to make Leader [Hakeem] Jeffries … Speaker Jeffries, and in order to do that, we have to figure out what didn’t go so great and what did well and how we do more of that,” Sen. Jamaal Bailey, the Bronx Democratic Party chairperson, said.
The tension at the Capitol is almost palpable. And it was apparent as soon as the six-month legislative session started in January.
“In a lot of areas, the governor was a drag on the ticket. That’s just a fact. So how much does that contribute to what we’re seeing now? I don’t know. I think the people who are most aggrieved aren’t here anymore. They lost,” said Sen. James Skoufis, a Hudson Valley Democrat and part of the conference’s more moderate faction.
“But it’s clear, regardless where it comes from, there is tension between a lot of the Legislature and the governor.”
How does it end up?
“There are two paths forward,” Skoufis surmised in the wake of the LaSalle rejection. “The place proverbially blows up for session, and the other is we hit a reset button. Obviously, I hope it’s the second.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Panaji: The five-day Budget Session of the Goa Assembly will begin on March 27 and conclude on March 31.
Last year, soon after the swearing in of his government for the second time, Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant had presented a budget focussing on revival of mining and fostering the economy with no new taxes.
He had presented a budget (expenditure) worth Rs 24,467.40 crore, of which Rs 17,097.50 was revenue expenditure, while Rs 7,369.90 was capital expenditure.
Sawant has said that this year’s budget will be realistic and futuristic, which will focus on areas like education, healthcare, sanitation, tribal welfare and other areas.
“My government has set the target of availing maximum benefit out of Centrally-sponsored schemes. The state will carry out schemes on priority areas like education, healthcare, sanitation, tribal welfare, etc. The Budget will be realistic and futuristic,” Sawant said.
“I just have a very strong general sympathy for underdogs,” Whitehouse said during a recent interview in his Capitol Hill office, which features a collection of Yacht Club bottles (Rhode Island’s official state soda) and walls adorned with moody lighthouse photos.
The junior Ocean State senator is hardly an underdog himself. His father, Charles Sheldon Whitehouse, was an ambassador to Laos and Thailand. After attending an elite boarding school in New Hampshire, Whitehouse studied at Yale University and the University of Virginia law school.
His victory over a GOP incumbent in 2006 played a key role in turning New England its current shade of blue. But even though Whitehouse is a pugnacious partisan at times, he still maintains surprising GOP friendships.
He led a delegation to Munich with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) earlier this year. When his arch-rival in many environmental debates decided to retire last year, Whitehouse described former Sen. Jim Inhofe as “a key ally on my oceans and infrastructure measures.”
Meanwhile, Whitehouse has also made waves about inequity in a surprising place: within his own party’s caucus. He sparked an internal Democratic battle in 2020 by arguing that Sen Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) shouldn’t helm the Judiciary panel while also serving as the party’s whip. Two years later, he sought to downgrade the ability of the party’s top four leaders to chair prime committees.
Whitehouse lost both fights. If you ask him, though, they were worth waging: “The overall effort was successful in sharing authority more broadly and fairly around the caucus.”
It doesn’t appear that his propensity to pick those internal battles rattled his leader’s confidence in his ability to wield the Budget gavel. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer described Whitehouse as “smart, persistent, passionate, and articulate.”
“He’s got a unique way of taking the complex federal budget and breaking it down to show it impacts the lives of everyday Americans,” Schumer added in a statement.
Whitehouse, a former U.S. attorney and state attorney general, was one of Schumer’s star recruits as Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair. The Rhode Island Democrat has yet to announce or rule out a fourth term in 2024.
A reelection bid could shine a brighter light on his work at the Budget panel — particularly the still-pending decision on whether Senate Democrats will write their own fiscal proposal or work from President Joe Biden’s blueprint. Asked earlier this month about the looming decision, all Whitehouse would say is “TBD.”
So for the moment, after giving nearly 300 “Time to Wake Up” speeches on the floor, Whitehouse is planning to devote still more attention to climate change on the committee. He also intends to use the gavel to home in on health care spending and better health outcomes for Americans, in addition to correcting a “corrupted tax code.”
Of course, the power of the Budget chair to effect any concrete policy changes is limited: Sanders tried to get a $6 trillion party-line policy bill done last Congress and eventually settled for something a fraction of the size.
And so far, Whitehouse isn’t getting bipartisan rave reviews.
“I call the committee kind of a useless appendage,” said Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), arguing that the new chair’s professed interest in budget reform still plays “second fiddle” to Whitehouse’s “main concern, which is climate.”
“I always believe that you should be doing what’s central to the committee itself,” Braun added.
Whitehouse says he’s serious about his budget reform goals — which Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also praised — and signaled he’d like to revive a push to set overall budget goals for Congress, such as limiting the country’s level of public debt compared to its GDP.
But he also counters skeptics by saying that his unorthodox focuses as chair speaks to a “throughline” of his career: “a very strong belief in government integrity.” The Rhode Island Democrat rails on what he calls a “concerted effort to pack the Supreme Court,” the subject of the book he published last year.
The failure of Congress to adequately respond to climate change, he maintains, has demonstrated “a dramatic lack of integrity, almost entirely due to the malign political influence of the fossil fuel industry operating semi-covertly through dark money channels and front groups.”
Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that Whitehouse is relishing the ability to use a chair’s microphone to spread his often-mellifluous message. The senator has a way with words when it comes to battling with Republicans.
“They’re relying on a new magic budget word. That word is ‘woke,’” Whitehouse said at a press conference earlier this month. “Call everything ‘woke’ and then try to cut its funding seems to be the strategy … The woke screen is a smoke screen.”
It was a cutting enough remark to earn an “oooh” of approval from Schumer.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Delhi: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday, will move the Finance Bill 2023, to give effect to the financial proposals of the central government.
This comes a day after the demand for grants was passed in Parliament.
The Finance Bill 2023, gives effect to the financial proposals of the central government for the financial year 2023-24 to be taken into consideration.
Earlier on Thursday, the Lok Sabha on passed demands for grants authorising expenditure of about Rs 45 lakh crore for 2023-24. The proposal was passed by voice vote amid protests by opposition members over their demand for a JPC probe into the Adani issue.
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla applied for the Guillotine when the House met at 6 pm following two adjournments earlier. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman moved the Bill to authorise payment and appropriation of certain sums from and out of the Consolidated Fund of India for the services of the financial year 2023-24 for passage in the House amid the din.
It was passed amid the din and the House was later adjourned for the day.
The two Houses of Parliament have been witnessing adjournments over the repeated logjam. While the BJP has been demanding an apology from Congress leader Rahul Gandhi over his remarks in the United Kingdom, the opposition has been demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe into the Hindenburg-Adani row.
The second half of the budget session began on March 13 and will commence on April 6.
The Finance Minister presented the Union Budget on February 1.
Nirmala Sitharaman’s fourth consecutive budget has reduced funds for developmental activities as expenditure booked for asset creation in 2022-23 saw a steep fall, reports Raashid Andrabi
Nirmala Sitharaman
Last week, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented Jammu and Kashmir’s fourth consecutive budget, for fiscal 2023-24. At Rs 118,500 crore, it is said to be the highest-ever budget estimate to have been presented for the next 365 days for Jammu and Kashmir, ending March 31, 2024.
Money Goes
The government is anticipated to spend Rs 33530 crore on salaries, Rs 12525 on pensions to the superannuating staff and Rs 8641 will go to “other” heads that are part of the primary revenue expenditure. That means 38.86 per cent of the total budget will go to the staff that man the government. Against booking an expenditure of Rs 44718 crore in 2022-23, the government would spend Rs 46055 crore on the salary and pension of its staff in 2023-24.
The government will purchase power worth Rs 3040 crore in fiscal 2023-24. Off late, the government has reduced funds for power purchases. In 2022-23, the resource allocated for power purchases for water-abundant and energy deficit was at Rs 5000 crore. However, the revised estimates suggest only Rs 3074 crore was spent.
The government is anticipated to pay Rs 9635 crore as interest payment – almost eight per cent of the overall expenditure. For the current fiscal the interest payments are at Rs 9076 crore. Besides, the government will clear debts – part of the capital expenditure, worth Rs 8099 crore. For 2022-23, the target was to repay Rs 3521 crore but the administration eventually paid back Rs 5030 crore.
Table 1 Revenue – Income and Expenditure 2023-23. These figures are part of the budget documents that FM Nirmala Sitharaman placed on the table in Lok Sabha in March 2023.
Developmental Activities
The developmental activities are allocated Rs 33,193 crore, including Rs 17,961 crore under PMDP and Rs 15,232 crore under CSS. Jammu and Kashmir will offer a mandatory contribution of Rs 3654 crore as its share to access CSS funds. This means 28.01 per cent of the overall spending stands allocated to developmental activities. It is Rs 4312 crore lesser than the allocations that had been made for developmental activities for 2022-23.
In fiscal 2022-23, Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget had allocated Rs 37505 crore (33.2 per cent of the overall expenditure) for developmental activities of which Rs 19074 crore was under PMDP and other allied projects and Rs 18431 crore of centrally sponsored schemes. However, the revised estimates laid on the table in Lok Sabha suggest an expenditure of only Rs 26537 crore (24.84 per cent) was booked, which is Rs 10968 crore less.
No details have been offered in the budget for the reduced allocations for developmental activities and the administration’s failure in spending the entire developmental allocation made for fiscal 2022-23.
The Income
On the income side, the centre will provide grants worth Rs 64,319 crore. Since Jammu and Kashmir is no longer a state and is reduced to a Union territory, the share from the central tax pool is now being converted into an outright grant.
Jammu and Kashmir has its own resources as well. It will be raising a tax revenue of Rs 20349 crore and non-tax (mostly services) of Rs 13,593 crore. That means that Jammu and Kashmir will raise almost Rs 33942 crore within the UT, which is 28.64 per cent of the overall fund requirement for fiscal 2023-34.
Table II Capital Expenditure 2023-24. These figures are part of the budget documents that FM Nirmala Sitharaman placed on the table in Lok Sabha in March 2023.
The budget indicates that Jammu and Kashmir will have additional resource mobilization of Rs 7,800 crore, which includes asset monetization. Besides, Jammu and Kashmir will borrow Rs 12439 crore from the market and within the system to fund the budget.
In fiscal 2022-23, the budget estimates had anticipated receiving Rs 34116 crore from its own resource – tax plus non-tax. However, it ended up collecting only Rs 28012 crore. Though all tax collections were achieved, the shortfall was in power tariff collections (got Rs 4609 instead of Rs 5000 crore) and additional resource mobilisation. Against a target of Rs 8802 crore for ARM, Jammu and Kashmir could mobilise a resource of only Rs 2484 crore.
The Speech
Sitharaman’s speech indicated that several objectives are laid out, including good governance, democracy at the grassroots level, sustainable agriculture, investment and industrial growth, employment generation, development acceleration, inclusivity, women empowerment, and social inclusion. It suggested that the government intends to double Jammu and Kashmir’s GDP within the next five years. It put the current GDP at Rs 2,30,727 crore
Sitharaman promised that all 18.36 lakh households in Jammu and Kashmir will have functional tap connections by 2023-24. Every household will be provided drinking water with a minimum of 55 litres per capita per day and of prescribed quality on a regular, long-term, and sustainable basis.
Agriculture and horticulture have been allocated Rs 2,526.74 crore, health and medical education have been allocated Rs 2,097.53 crore, rural development got Rs 4,169.26 crore, the power sector was given Rs 1,964.90 crore, Jal Shakti has been allocated Rs 7,161 crore, housing and urban development got Rs 2,928.04 crore, education has been allocated Rs 1,521.87 crore, and construction of roads and bridges has been allocated Rs 4,062.87 crore.
The debt position of Jammu and Kashmir. These figures are part of the budget documents that FM Nirmala Sitharaman placed on the table in Lok Sabha in March 2023.
Responses
The budget estimates generated a mixed response from the political and business classes. The ruling BJP commended the budget for its efforts to promote economic growth and development, but others disagreed.
The National Conference (NC) has been vocal in its criticism of the budget, referring to it as mere “flamboyance and wordplay” with no real substance for trade, industry, and commerce. They have expressed disappointment at the lack of a clear blueprint for job creation and the lack of focus on the horticulture sector, which is a significant contributor to the region’s economy. They also raised concerns about the plight of unemployed youth and the need-based employees who were not given much consideration in the budget. They further questioned why the elected Assembly was not consulted before the budget’s tabling for the fifth time in a row.
Comrade Yousuf Tarigami, a long-term lawmaker expressed his disappointment stating the budget failed to address critical issues such as unemployment and inflation, which continue to plague the region. He believes that the budget should have had more concrete plans to create employment opportunities and reduce the rising inflation rate, which has been a significant concern for the people of Jammu and Kashmir. He has criticized the government for not taking these issues seriously and ignoring the urgent need to address them in the budget.
On the other hand, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has praised the budget, hailing it as “development-oriented” and a significant step towards realizing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of establishing peace and progress in the region. They believe that the budget’s provisions will facilitate the ongoing development of the Union Territory and bring about a positive change in the lives of its residents.
New Delhi: The Delhi BJP on Wednesday rejected the annual budget 2023-24 of the AAP government as “directionless” and “repackaging of old promises”.
Delhi Finance Minister Kailash Gahlot presented the Rs 78,800-crore budget, giving a major push to transport and infrastructure with an allocation of Rs 21,817 crore ahead of the G20 Summit, and announced a comprehensive plan to make the national capital a “clean, beautiful and modern city”.
Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva claimed that the budget had nothing new to offer.
“Various schemes like road upgradation, Yamuna cleaning, development of lakes and bus procurement were already repeated many times by the Arvind Kejriwal government in the past months and years,” he said.
The entire budget was full of repackaged promises and plans of the government that were not fulfilled in the past, he claimed.
Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly, Ramvir Singh Bidhuri said the budget is a question mark on the AAP government’s credibility and that it is directionless.
Gahlot talked about zero tolerance against corruption in his budget speech which was the “worst” joke as two ministers of the Kejriwal government are in jail for their involvement in scams, he said.
The finance minister promised that in 2023-24, there will not be a single broken road or footpath, but this government makes such promises several times a year, he said.
BJP MP Manoj Tiwari termed the Kejriwal government’s budget 2023-24 as a “copy-paste” of the previous budget.
“Kejriwal has no longer any vision, that is why there is nothing new in the budget and people are still suffering from its failures,” he charged.
BJP MLA Vijender Gupta said the budget was an “eyewash” and health and education sectors were in “disarray” despite significant allocations over the years.
“Out of the total budgeted estimate of Rs 78,800 crore, only Rs 21,817 crore (or 27 per cent) is allocated for capital expenditure, while the remaining Rs 56,983 crore is directed towards revenue expenditure. This points to financial mismanagement,” Gupta said.
In the name of G-20 preparations, the finance minister has made several claims. But none of the projects Gahlot spoke about could be completed within six months, when the G20 is supposed to take place, he added.
Coimbatore: The Tamil Nadu BJP Agricultural Wing on Tuesday termed the State Agriculture budget as a “paper budget” and not beneficial to the farmer community.
Without assessing whether the budget of Rs 32,775.78 crore presented in 2021 and Rs 33,307 crore in 2022 really reached and benefitted the farmers, the government has presented over Rs 38,000 crore budget this year, the schemes of which will not benefit the farming community, Tamil Nadu BJP Agriculture Wing president G K Nagaraj said in a statement here.
Tamil Nadu Agriculture Minister M R K Panneerselvam today presented the Agriculture budget for 2023-24.
The training given to 300 farmers from Tamil Nadu in foreign countries was a Central scheme, and Rs 130 crore plantation scheme in Theni was also sponsored by the Union government, Nagaraj said.
The Rs 22 crore for ‘Pasumaikudil’ scheme for horticulture sector was very meagre and only benefitted farmers owning 10 acres of land, whereas those in Nilgiris and Hosur dsitricts had sought to set up the scheme in at least 600 acres, as they are engaged in the export of rose, capsicum and cucumber, he said. Meanwhile, Coimbatore South BJP MLA and All India Mahila Morcha president Vanathi Srinivasan said that the budget did not have solutions to the basic needs of farmers.
Terming the budget as “juggling rhetoric”, Vanathi in a statement said that it was totally disappointing that there was no announcement of supplying coconut oil in ration shops instead of palm oil.
New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday requesting him to “not stop Delhi’s budget”, amid a row between the Centre and the AAP dispensation in the national capital over the issue.
The presentation of the Delhi government’s Budget for 2023-24, which was scheduled for Tuesday, has been put on hold with the Kejriwal dispensation and the central government trading charges over allocations under various heads.
“This is the first in the last 75 years that a state’s budget has been stalled. Why are you upset with Delhiites? Please don’t stall Delhi’s budget. With folded hands, Delhiites urge you to pass their budget,” the chief minister said in the letter.
Speaking at a News18 programme on Monday, Kejriwal charged that the Centre was resorting to “gundagardi” and said it was the first time in the country’s history that the budget of a government was put on hold. A video clip of his speech was tweeted by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Sources in the city government said the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has stopped the budget and it will not be tabled in the Delhi Assembly on Tuesday.
As the chief minister lashed out at the Centre, sources in the MHA said the ministry has sought clarification from the AAP government as its budget proposal had high allocation for advertisement and relatively low funding for infrastructure and other development initiatives.
Taking to Twitter on Tuesday, the chief minister referred to the Economic Survey report on per capita income rising by 14.18 per cent in Delhi said the national capital was doing “exceedingly well” despite obstacles.
“Delhi is doing exceedingly well, despite all obstacles being created on daily basis. Imagine if such obstacles were not created and all govts worked together for the welfare of people. Then Delhi would grow multiple times faster,” he tweeted.
According to the Economic Survey tabled in the Delhi Assembly on Monday, per capita income in the national capital rose by 14.18 per cent to Rs 4,44,768 in 2022-23 at current prices compared to Rs 3,89,529 in 2021-22.
The per capita income of Delhi has been around 2.6 times higher as compared to the national average, both at current and constant prices. It was Rs 3,31,112 in 2020-21.
The tax collection of the Delhi government registered a “tremendous” growth rate of 36 per cent during 2021-22 (provisional) as compared to the negative growth of 19.53 per cent in 2020-21 due to COVID-19 pandemic, the survey tabled by state Finance Minister Kailash Gahlot said.
“Delhi’s growth speaks,” Kejriwal said in another tweet.
New Delhi: The presentation of the Delhi government’s budget for 2023-24, scheduled for Tuesday, has been put on hold, with the Arvind Kejriwal dispensation and the central government trading charges over allocations in various heads.
Speaking at a News 18 programme on Monday, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal charged that the Centre was resorting to “gundagardi” and that it was for the first time in the history of the country that a budget of a government was put on hold. A video clip of his speech was tweeted by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Sources in the Delhi government said the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has stopped the Kejriwal government’s budget and it will not be tabled in the Assembly on Tuesday.
As the chief minister lashed out at the Centre, sources in the MHA said the ministry has sought clarification from the AAP government as its budget proposal had high allocation for advertisement and relatively low funding for infrastructure and other development initiatives.
Delhi Finance Minister Kailash Gahlot denied the charges as lies. The total budget size was Rs 78,800 crore, out of which 22,000 crore was earmarked for expenditure on infrastructure and just Rs 550 crore on advertisements, he said.
The allocation for advertisement was the same as in last year’s budget, he added.
In a statement, the MHA said, “The Lieutenant Governor, Delhi, had raised certain concerns of administrative nature on the proposed Budget, keeping in view the fiscal interest of the National Capital Territory on which MHA vide its letter dated 17.03.2023 has requested GNCTD to resubmit the Budget addressing these concerns for taking further action. The reply from GNCTD is awaited for last four days. For the benefit of the people of Delhi, the GNCTD should submit reply immediately.”
In a separate statement, Gahlot said, “It is now learned that the MHA expressed some concerns on Delhi government’s budget and refused to give it approval through a letter sent to the Chief Secretary on 17 March. For mysterious reasons, the Chief Secretary of Delhi kept the letter hidden for 3 days.”
“I learned about the letter only at 2 pm today… The file with MHA’s letter was put up to me officially only at 6pm today i.e. just the day before the budget was to be presented in Delhi Assembly. Subsequently, we have responded to MHA’s concerns and submitted the file back to Delhi’s LG, after CM’s approval, at 9pm today. The role of the Chief Secretary and Finance Secretary of Delhi in delaying Delhi’s budget ought to be investigated,” he said.
A source in the LG office said, “The file was received in LG Sectt at 9:25 PM and was sent back to the Chief Minister at 10:05 PM, after approval of LG, for further action as per law.”
Delhi government sources said that the finance secretary will write to the MHA on Tuesday for its approval and the budget will be tabled after its nod. They said budget will not be tabled on Tuesday.
According to sources in the lieutenant governor’s office, LG V K Saxena approved the Annual Financial Statement for 2023-2024, with certain observations on March 9, and sent the file to the chief minister.
The Government of Delhi, thereafter, sought the approval of the President as mandated by law by sending a letter to the Home Ministry.
The Home Ministry conveyed its observations to the Delhi government on March 17. The LG office is awaiting for the file to be sent to it from the chief minister.
According to LG office sources, Saxena flagged that “as against proposed Budget size of Rs 78,800 crore, the expenditure on Capital components is indicated at Rs 21,816 crore, which is only 27.68%…. Further, this also includes Rs 5,586.92 crore on account of loan repayment, which, if excluded will further reduce the Capital component to Rs 16,230 crore which is only 20% of the budget.”
“Since Delhi is the country’s capital and also a large metropolis in which need for creation and improvements of infrastructure is extremely important, the allocation for Capital projects does not appear to be sufficient,” the LG said.
“It is noted that expenditure incurred by the Directorate of Information & Publicity as per the Revised Estimate 2022-23 is Rs 272.21 crore against the Budget Estimate of Rs 511.64 crore. However, the allocation for the Budget Estimate 2023-24 is Rs. 557.24 crore, which seems incomprehensible and unjustifiable,” he further said.
He claimed that the entire potential under various central schemes has not been fully utilised by Delhi.
“A case in example, the flagship scheme of Ayushman Bharat’, has not yet been adopted by Delhi due to which CSS funds under health sector are not made available. The Union Territory needs to obtain all possible funds under Central Schemes to augment its resources and also to meet national goals,” he said.
There was no clarity yet on when the budget will be presented in the Assembly. The ongoing budget session of the Assembly is scheduled to conclude on March 23.
Delhi Finance Minister Kailash Gahlot on Monday tabled an outcome budget of the Kejriwal government and the economic survey, 2022-23.
Earlier in the day, the Assembly was adjourned till 11 am on Tuesday.
