CM starts budget planning meetings

Expected to be tabled in March

With education, health, transport and environment expected to be the focus of the Delhi government’s budget for 2018-2019, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday kicked off a series of meetings to plan the budget for the upcoming financial year.

According to sources involved in the process, the exercise started with a meeting to discuss the proposals of the Education Department on Monday. The Health Department would be taken up on Tuesday, said an official. Similarly, all departments would be covered in about a week, said the official.

Skill centres

While the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government’s focus on education and healthcare is likely to remain, sources said funding priorities within a department could see a shift. For instance, the government has focused on constructing more classrooms in the past three years.

In 2018-2019, while the emphasis on education would remain, building more classrooms may not get the kind of funding it got in the first fee budgets of the AAP government, the official said. Another area that could get more funding in the budget could be setting up of skill centres, the official said.

Sources said the transport and environment sectors could be prioritised more in the budget this time. The AAP government is in the process of procuring more buses, including a fleet of electric buses, a capital-intensive move.

The Delhi budget is expected to be tabled in the Assembly in the beginning of March. For 2017-2018, the AAP government had proposed a ₹48,000-crore budget, with 24% of it going towards education and a goal of constructing 10,000 new classrooms.