Bashir Assad
Jammu, Mar11 : Lashing out at the government for not controlling the unproductive expenditure, the NPP legislator, Harshdev Singh Monday said the total income of the state does not account for even 20% of the total receipts.
While participating in discussion on budget-2013-14, Harshdev Singh regretted that we were expecting a path breaking budget from the experienced Finance Minister Abdul Rahim Rather but it was no different from the previous budgets.
While negating the projected growth rate in the proposed budget, Harshdev Singh said the growth rate was not a real test for healthy economy of the state and added that a few hundred people constitute 1/3rd of the growth rate at the national level where millions of people are still living below poverty line. He said the growth rate does not take into account the glaring inequalities between haves and have -nots.
Harshdev said 80% of the population was associated with the agriculture and regretted that barring some cosmetic measures there was nothing substantial for the farmers in the budget. hiting out at the government over "unfulfilled promises", Harshdev posed a question to the Finance Minister as how many promises he could keep during last four or five years.
"Last year you talked about opening of polytechnic colleges, increasing remuneration of SPos and VDCs, Jammu Airport extension, 50 crores for development of bad pockets but this year there is no mention of all these promises" said Harshdev. He said only 20 crores were released for bad pockets out of the total 50 crores budgetary allocations for bad pockets and there was no mention of what happened to the 30 crores.
NPP leader further said, announcing remuneration of Rs. 2000 for Sarpanches and leaving Panches and even the chairmen of Panchayat Adalats was regrettable.
Picking of holes in budgetary support for tourism sector in two regions, Harshdev said, "Rs. 333 crores have been proposed for Jammu region while as 1100 crores have been suggested for Dal Lake alone. 87 crore for Leh, 81 crores for Kargil and what about Jammu" Harshdev posed question to the Finance Minister.
He said there was no mention of Mubarak Mandi and Patnitop Cable Car Projects in the budget.
On employability, Singh said last year the government had fixed a target of training 1 lakh youth under Himayat Scheme but regretted that the scheme finds no mention in this year's budget as if the target was achieved by the government.
"First you talked about providing government jobs to 50, 000 youth, last year it was told that 80,000 youth will be employed and then it was said that 43, 000 youth will be engaged as Casual Laboures but there was nothing on ground of that sorts" said Harshdev.
Others who participated in the discussion include Choudery Zulfkar and Peerzada Mansur Hussain of PDP, Charanjit Singh (independent), Javed Dar of NC and others. |
