Other States - Rajasthan   

Gehlot scripts ‘aam aadmi’ budget

PHOTO Rohit Jain Paras

Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, who also holds Finance portfolio, presenting the State budget for 2009-10 in the Assembly in Jaipur on Wednesday.

JAIPUR: A decline in tax revenue and an additional burden on the State from implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission’s recommendations did not deter Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot from coming out on Wednesday with a budget dedicated in its tone and tenor to the “aam aadmi”.

The Rajasthan Budget for 2009-10 presented by Mr. Gehlot, who holds the Finance portfolio, reminded one of the Union Budget presented by Union Finance Pranab Mukherjee in Parliament two days earlier. And that was intentional.

For Mr. Gehlot, who had to thank the people of Rajasthan for his resounding victory in the Lok Sabha elections through his budget, said at the very outset of his almost two-hour-long speech that his government would be following the direction set by the Union Budget in these difficult times of global economic slowdown.

“It will be possible to keep the momentum of progress only by following the steps initiated in the Central Budget,” he said.

The presentation of the Rs.39-crore surplus budget was punctuated by interruptions from opposition BJP members. The budget speech, which quoted Mahatma Gandhi’s oft quoted “I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt…” in the end perhaps lacked humour but it contained enough sincerity.

On three occasions Mr. Gehlot repeated certain words, identified with the previous BJP Government’s alleged corruption such as “90 B” and “single-window system” to bring in sarcasm, if not humour. However it did not provoke the person at the receiving end, former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, who sat in silence.

The annual Plan outlay of Rs.17,322 crore approved by the Planning Commission increased to Rs.18,635 crores in the modified budget which is 33 per cent higher than the 2008-09 outlay and the biggest ever Plan for the State. The budget shows a revenue deficit of Rs.1,409 crore. The maximum budgetary allocation of 51.08 per cent went to the energy sector which is poised to add an additional 945 MW production capacity this year. By 2011-12 the State will have another 1860 MW generation capacity.

However, even when going soft, Mr. Gehlot revised the VAT (value added tax) rate from the existing 12.5 per cent to 14 per cent while hiking the VAT on tobacco and tobacco products to a staggering 20 per cent (as has been done in the case of foreign liquor and beer). While reiterating his Government’s promise not to hike rates of electricity supplied to farmers, he announced a surcharge of 10 paise per unit on commercial consumers for water conservation.

The Opposition termed the budget inflationary and regressive. “The budget provisions are bound to retard progress. All the development works initiated by our Government have come to a standstill,” Ms. Raje said. The CPI (M) found the budget disappointing and directionless. It would add to the inflation. The Government, deeply in debt, would not be in position to fulfil the announcements, said CPI (M) State Secretariat member Ravindra Shukla.

Mr. Gehlot announced tax relief for about a dozen items, including dimensional stones, equipment used in effluent treatment plants, saris with zari and gota work, de-oiled rice bran used as cattle feed, newsprint and on herbal medicine. The tax relief covered laboratory equipment used in schools, diamond bits used in mines and khadi products.

He brought down the stamp duty on the sale of fixed assets to five per cent in the case of men and four per cent for women, and dropped the luxury tax on hotel rooms with a daily tariff of up to Rs.3,000. The land tax also has been reduced by 50 per cent in five categories of land which has mineral deposits.

The fresh tax proposals are aimed at moping up Rs.500 crore whereas the concessions would take away Rs.400 crore. “We will not allow the momentum of development to slow down,” said Mr. Gehlot later talking to journalists in the presence of Principal Secretary (Finance) C.K. Mathew and Secretary (Finance) Deepak Upreti. A new area for revenue for Rajasthan would be , he informed.

Asked about not effecting the expected reduction of State tax on petrol and diesel—which made these items costlier in Rajasthan compared to Delhi and Haryana—Mr. Gehlot said he was looking into it.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

‘Go for an intelligent balance between natural resources and technology’
Rajasthan steps to beef up internal security
Gehlot scripts ‘aam aadmi’ budget

Copyright © 2009, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu