Social sector gets a generous ladle of funds

Giving more impetus to the social sector, chief minister Sheila Dikshit announced a string of new schemes for the lower strata of the society on Tuesday. HT reports.

Giving more impetus to the social sector, chief minister Sheila Dikshit announced a string of new schemes for the lower strata of the society on Tuesday.

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Of the total planned budget of R13,600 crore, Dikshit allocated almost R 7,600 crore - about 56% of total budget outlay - on health, education, sanitation, social security and welfare schemes.

In the R27,067-crore budget (both planned and non-planned), transport sector got the highest allocation of R3,348 crore, followed by R1,801 crore for health and R1,301 crore for education.

Unveiling an ambitious universal free health facility, which will cover nearly 27 lakh school-going children up to the age of 14 years, and an initial corpus of R100 crore has been proposed in the budget for this fiscal.

Dikshit also set aside R405 crore for construction of houses for economically weaker sections while earmarking R180 crore for improving civic amenities in slum clusters.

The chief minister proposed an amount of R698 crore for development work in over 1,200 unauthorised colonies and announced enhanced monthly emolument for Anganwadi workers.

She also announced exemption for kerosene stoves, lanterns and petromax lamps and their spares from VAT.

Interestingly, her government had levied 5% VAT on these products in the last fiscal only.

Dikshit, who also holds the finance portfolio, proposed R13,600 crore as planned outlay and R13,307 crore as non-plan expenditure.