The Opposition parties on Tuesday dubbed the 2019-20 budget as election budget offering ‘poll lollipops’ alleging that the Government exercise has failed to address serious issue in State.
Leader of Opposition in State Assembly Hemant Soren said that through the budget the State Government using data and figures has tried to shine its image, but the reality is completely opposite to government’s claim. Soren said, “Going through the Government figures and data and budget provisions it appears that it is not government budget, but an election manifesto of ruling party.” Soren claimed that the State Government has tried to do juggling with data and it is another Jumla of saffron party.
Echoing the views of Soren, Jharkhand Vikash Morcha (JVM) senior leader and party MLA Pradeep Yadav said that there is no vision in the budget and the government has failed to address some of the core sectors such as women and child and minority welfare. Yadav also said that as compared to previous year budget, there has been decline in budget allocation in various sector. Yadav said, “In last budget there was allocation of 13.94 per cent of total budget outlay in education sector which has been reduced to 13.56 per cent, similarly in rural development in last budget there was 14.68 per cent of total budgetary allocation which has been brought down to 14.32 per cent in this budget. In energy sector, in this budget there has been 6.16 per cent of total budgetary allocation, which is less than 0.81 as compared to previous budget in power sector.”
JMM MLA and party’s young face, Kunal Sarangi too termed the budget as BJP’s election manifesto with schemes and policies aiming to benefit BJP cadres. Sarangi said, “The much acclaimed Ashirwad Yojana of the Government is an attempt to create BJP cadres, as there has been direction that beneficiaries of the scheme should be party cadre from saffron brigade.” Sarangi said that he was disappointed with the budget as they expected that in the budget there will be provisions for setting up youth commission, but this time too government has failed to create youth commission.
The State Congress too has slammed the Raghubar Das budget terming it as anti poor. State Congress president, Dr Ajay Kumar said: “By just increasing the budget size it is not going to help the poor people of the State. Going by government data and figures it is clear that Government has failed to utilise much of its budgetary allocation in nine months and when three months are left there will be mad rush for utilizing fund leading to March loot of public money.”
Kumar said that new provisions in agriculture, health, child and women development indicates that government has failed to address the issue of farmer, child and women in the State.
