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With eyes on 2021 assembly polls, Bengal finance minister showers sops for all in budget
West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra offered new subsidies and schemes for all sections starting from unemployed youths and backward sections to homeless tea garden workers.
With eyes on 2021 assembly polls, Bengal finance minister showers sops for all in budget
HT Correspondent
letters@hindustantimes.com
Kolkata: West Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra on Monday announced an array of new welfare schemes and subsidies in the second Trinamool Congress government’s last full-budget before the crucial 2021 assembly polls. Mitra did not announce any allocation for revision of salary and pension of state government employees and college teachers in accordance with pay commission recommendations.
The announcements drew sharp criticism from opposition parties with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) describing it as a “fairy tale budget.”
Presenting a ₹2, 55, 677 crore budget that marked an 18 per cent rise in planned expenditure over last year, Mitra offered new subsidies and schemes for all sections, starting from unemployed youths and backward classes to homeless tea garden workers.
He also mentioned in his speech that the state already faces a loan burden of more than ₹50,000 crore. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee sat behind him in the assembly when the budget was placed.
Among the major announcements were a ₹500 crore allocation for social security for 1.5 crore backward class families and ₹2500 crore for a monthly old age pension of ₹1000 each for 21 lakh members of the scheduled caste communities. Mitra announced another ₹500 crore for similar schemes for members of the scheduled tribes.
The budget includes ₹100 crore towards support for new medium and small industries and ₹500 crore towards loan and subsidies to be offered to unemployed youths for setting up projects costing up to ₹2 lakh.
Another major announcement is a provident fund scheme for 1.5 crore families of workers in the unorganized sector and will cost the exchequer ₹500 crore.
Mitra also announced ₹500 crore for setting up houses for permanent workers of tea gardens in north Bengal. “There are about three lakh workers in 370 tea gardens,” Mitra said.
He also announced that families that consume less than 75 units of electricity in three months will not have to pay their power bills. This will cost the state ₹200 crore, he said.
Mitra also announced separate universities for SCs, STs, OBCs and Hindi-speaking people, inviting sharp criticism from the opposition. BJP state president Dilip Ghosh said the schemes were floated because his party has made deep inroads among these sections of the population and recent polls have proved it.
“Economic growth is meaningless without employment. While unemployment rate in the country is on the rise, Bengal has created 9.11 lakh jobs in 2019-2020,” said Mitra while ending his speech by reciting a few lines from a poem written by the chief minister.
Talking to the media after the budget, Banerjee and Mitra alleged that in the current fiscal, the Centre has not given the state ₹11213 crore collected from taxes, ₹37973 crore payable to Bengal towards grants and ₹1300 crore as compensation on goods and services tax (GST).
“This is affecting our welfare schemes. Everybody should work together to improve economic conditions. If required, the Prime Minister should speak to opposition parties. There should not be any political vendetta,” said Banerjee.
“This is a fairy tale budget having no relation with ground reality. The budget talks of ₹4,00,000 crore worth of new industrial investment but where is the resource and infrastructure for that? Mitra announced new public welfare schemes but did not mention where the money would come from,” said Sayantan Basu, BJP state general secretary.
“The budget has cheated state government employees, teachers and pensioners. And, what is the point in announcing pro-people projects when nothing is implemented? This is a nothing but jugglery with numbers,” said leader of the opposition Abdul Mannan of the Congress.
“The budget is aimed at the elections. If old age pension for scheduled caste people from poor economic background is being hiked from ₹750 to ₹1000 why are others left out from this scheme?” said Communist party of India (Marxist) lawmaker Sujan Chakraborty.
Meanwhile, governor Jagdeep Dhankhar took exception to the live telecast of Mitra’s budget speech on local television channels as his speech at the inauguration of the budget session last week was not aired. “This is of critical consequence for media. Is the acceptable expression of ideas? Is it not intolerance of the constitutional head? Is it not a kind of censorship?” Dhankhar said in a statement.
Asked about his statement, Banerjee said, “I am not concerned with this. Please ask the speaker.”
Speaker Biman Banerjee was not available for comment.
