Opposition parties on Monday criticised the AAP government and claimed that it is fooling the public with its Budget presented by deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia.
Opposition parties on Monday criticised the AAP government and claimed that it is fooling the public with its Budget presented by deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia.
Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta said the Budget, for the year 2016-17 presented by Mr Sisodia, is nothing but an ambitious and clever exercise to hide failure and inability of the Delhi government to achieve the targets set for 2015-16. “Notwithstanding tall claims of Mr Sisodia, the government has failed to strengthen its financial position despite revision of rate of VAT etc. The Delhi government has failed on both financial and implementation fronts,” added Mr Gupta.
The Delhi BJP said this Budget is old wine in new bottle. “The government, which made tall claims in its first Budget, could not give anything to the people and the proof of this fact is the statement of finance minister Manish Sisodia that only 40 per cent of the Budget allocation for the year 2015-16 could be utilised. It seems to us, the government spent only on its self-glorification,” said Delhi BJP president Satish Upadhyay.
The BJP ruled civic bodies also attacked the Budget, saying that the city government had not cared to give any hike in the allocation for the civic bodies whereas it is making hollow claims of allocating Rs 1,000 crore more than the last year’s allocation. Leader of House in South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), Asish Sood, said that only Rs 4,289 crore was allocated during financial year 2015-16 whereas the government is claiming an amount of Rs 5,908 crore.
“The Delhi government Budget has gone up from Rs 37,900 crore to Rs 46,600 crore, which is more than nine per cent increase compared to last year’s Budget. As far as allocation for the corporations is concerned, it has gone up from 14 per cent to 14.04 per cent — a negligible hike. The intentions of the city government are politically motivated and it is all out to weaken the civic bodies,” added Mr Sood.
Slamming the Budget, Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken described the AAP government’s Budget as a “report card of the AAP’s failures of the past one year” which brought development in the national capital to a standstill.
“The shortfall in revenue collection and shortfall in planned budget spending are two alarming signs of governance failure in an economy and both the factors dominated the Budget figures of the Kejriwal government. With the massive decline in expenditure in important sectors like education, health, transport etc. and the only increase in government spending being on salaries of MLAs and publicity of the ruling party, gives the common man no reason to celebrate the present Budget,” said Mr Maken.
