Fadnavis’s Panchamtrut budget showers sops, aims to please all

The Deputy CM who is also the finance minister presented the 2023-2024 budget called it Panchamrut alluding to the five areas this government is focusing on: agriculture, infrastructure, women and backward communities, environment and employment generation.

Mumbai: With an eye on the forthcoming elections for more than 75% of local bodies in the state, including the BMC, and the 2024 Assembly elections, the Shinde-Fadnavis government presented a please-all budget on Thursday.

Women empowerment is also one of the key focus areas of this budget. Fadnavis announced a revised ‘Lek Ladki’ scheme under which any girl child from a family which is below the poverty line, will get ₹23,000 in four slabs until she reaches Class-IX and ₹75,000 upon attaining 18 years of age. (ANI)

Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis who is also the finance minister presented the 2023-2024 budget called it Panchamrut alluding to the five areas this government is focusing on: agriculture, infrastructure, women and backward communities, environment and employment generation.

The budget estimate for 2023-’24 is ₹5,47,450 crore up from last year’s ₹4,95,404 crore while the actual figure of the 2021-’22 budget is ₹4,06,369 crore. There has been an increase in total expenditure on account of the relief granted to farmers and people suffering from natural calamities, announced the government.

GST collections and stamp duty-registrations helped the state government in revising its revenue estimate from ₹4.03 lakh crore in 2022-’23 to ₹4.31 lakh crore and led to reduction in revenue deficit from ₹24,353 crore to ₹19,965 crore. This will also aid the state government in spending more on development schemes. The GST collection for 2022-’23 is expected to touch ₹1.25 lakh crore up from the estimated ₹1.20 lakh crore. Similarly, the stamp duty-registration will mop up ₹8,000 crore more than the estimated collection of ₹32,000 crore in the ongoing FY 22-23. Likewise excise duty will be up by ₹1,000 crore from estimated ₹22, 000 crore.

Given that this is a crucial year politically, Devendra Fadnavis announced sops for almost all the sections of the society. This included giving ₹6,000 as annual cash benefit to every farmer in addition to the existing PM-Kisan scheme in which the same amount is credited to around 11.5 million or almost 75% farmers in the state.

This additional spend will put a burden of ₹12,000 crore on state exchequer. Further, the budget announced crop insurance at ₹1 for which ₹3,312 crore has been earmarked. At present farmers have to pay 2% of the premium from their pocket.

Women empowerment is also one of the key focus areas of this budget. Fadnavis announced a revised ‘Lek Ladki’ scheme under which any girl child from a family which is below the poverty line, will get ₹23,000 in four slabs until she reaches Class-IX and ₹75,000 upon attaining 18 years of age. There has also been a significant rise in the remuneration of Asha and Anganwadi workers which has been their long-pending demand, a concession in stamp duty by 1% on the homes registered in the name of women, and a 50 % discount on tickets of state transport buses for women.

With the memories of the pandemic still looming large the government announced special sops for health. Poor families can now avail free treatment for various ailments in private hospitals up to ₹5 lakh under the state’s Mahatma Jotirao Phule Janarogy Yojana.

The Shinde-Fadnavis government also announced community-wise reservation in housing stock in the budget. Under a housing scheme named after prime minister Narendra Modi, the government will build 10 lakh houses in three years for OBCs. A provision of ₹12,000 crore has been made for this. Other housing schemes announced in the budget have provision of housing units for SCs and Matangs, Schedule Tribes and Vimukt Jati and Nomadic Tribes (VJNT). Similarly, the fisherfolk community has been given insurance of ₹5 lakh, besides the diesel subsidy and a corpus for project-affected fisherfolk.

There’s an outlay of ₹3,996 crore for OBCs, ₹4000 crore for road development in areas dominated by Banjara, tribal and Dhangar (shepherd) communities. The Dhangar community, which is upset with the government for the failure to give them reservation as ST community, will benefit from an allocation of ₹1,000 crore for 22 schemes for them. As part of the government’s efforts to woo various communities, the budget also announced construction of memorials for icons from multiple communities.

The state has 25 municipal corporations due for the elections shortly. Keeping that in mind, the government announced a slew of infrastructure projects including Metro, railway, highways, passenger terminals, city beautification project, water transport etc. Besides the reiteration of construction of the three metro lines over 42.5km in Mumbai Metropolitan Region with the outlay of ₹19,080 crore. The budget also announced new Metro projects for Thane city, Nashik, Pimpri-Chinchwad and parts of Pune. The budget has provisioned ₹1,729 crore for Mumbai beautification, ₹424 crore water transport in Thane and Vasai creek and ₹162 crore for Jetty at Gateway of India.

Devendra Fadnavis said public interest trumped political considerations in the budget. The budget, he added was made on the basis of recommendations from several interest groups. “The fiscal health of the state is absolutely well within the parameters set by the central government and the Reserve Bank of India. The budget we presented is a most realistic one,” he said.

Opposition leaders and analysts said the populist measures in the budget could be difficult to implement considering the limitation on revenue generation.

Leader of opposition and former finance minister Ajit Pawar said the sops announced by the government would suggest it has already anticipated its fate in apex court. “The sops of crores of rupees have been announced, but they will be difficult to implement for the want of money. They could spend only 55% of the outlay and 33% of the district scheme outlay meant for development works in the wake of their changed priorities. The government has perhaps realised that its countdown had begun,” he told the media.

Rupesh Keer of Samarthan, a no-profit organisation which analyses state budgets, said, “The state has gone a step ahead of the Modi government in announcement of various sops and schemes. Whether the government will be able to fulfil all these promises is a big question as its revenue sources have been exhausted. The spending on the wages, pensions and interest on the loan has gone up to 56.44% in 2023-24 from 51.69% in 2022-23. Central funding proposed in the 15th finance commission has still not been fully paid.”