Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Thursday clarified in the Delhi Assembly that she had never said her government would roll back the hike in Value Added Tax announced on any of the commodities in the Delhi Budget. She said when some MLAs approached her demanding that VAT be reduced on domestic cooking gas, from which subsidy had been withdrawn, she had stated that the matter would be considered. As soon as the House assembled, Leader of Opposition V. K. Malhotra said that at a time when the Assembly was in session, the Chief Minister had made statements on the Budget proposals outside the House and this was unethical. At this, Ms. Dikshit asserted that she had not made any specific statements on the Budget proposals. However, this did not pacify the opposition BJP MLAs and they protested against alleged misconduct. Speaker Yoganand Shastri said as a matter of principle statements should not be made outside the House but declared that since the Leader of the House had issued a clarification the matter should be considered settled. Later Prof. Malhotra said it was a matter of propriety that had been raised by him and he regretted that the Chief Minister had rescinded from the statements allegedly made by her to the media on the issue of reducing some taxes.
During Question Hour, Industries Minister Haroon Yusuf informed the House that the Delhi Government had urged the Centre to raise the income limit for Below Poverty Line and Above Poverty Line ration card holders so that the number of beneficiaries could go up. He said a request had also been made to increase Delhi's quota of ration cards so that more people could get ration at subsidised rates.
