JAMMU: State Congress termed the budget as directionless and jugglery of words without anything substantial to fulfill the false slogans and promises made by the PDP- BJP Coalition Government.
Reacting to the budget, Chief Spokesperson JKPCC, Ravinder Sharma termed the same as simply jugglery of words lacking any initiative rather has failed to address the issues of different suffering sections of the society due to unprecedented hike of all commodities in recent times and failure of the government to stream line the system.
He said that while on one hand there is no provision of creation of jobs and employment opportunities while another hand making Aadhar Card mandatory for registration of unemployed youth applying for jobs or any employment scheme is against the interest of unemployed youth, as they would face further undue expenditure and hassles of getting themselves registered before applying for any post.
He said that lakhs of people are still without Aadhar card and there are numerous discrepancies and mistakes in the Aadhar cards issued so far without any efficient remedial system. He questioned where is creation of jobs in the budget.
Similarly there is another announcement of initiative to frame policy for regularisation of agitating casual and need based and daily wagers etc without identifying different category of people and period of their working besides lack of any allocation in the budget of this year would again remain a matter of confusion and dream for large number of them in near future. He said that there was already a policy in vogue to engage persons on regular bases who donate land to government for schools, PHE stations etc. Again the implementation of Seventh Pay Commission has been further postponed by one year thus issue of pay anomalies of employees still remain undressed. He said that once again the BJP has failed to get Yatri tax on pilgrims imposed on Vaishno Devi and other pilgrims availing helicopter services withdrawn, despite repeated announcement is by BJP and its ministers. He said that there is no provision for tourism promotion and other similar developmental needs.
He also said there is no provision for upliftment of farmers and small traders especially the common man in the budget, while many items of common use will be costlier by unreasonable proposal in the budget adding that increasing the passenger tax and entry tax on passenger vehicles, will cause hike in the prices of essential commodities. The government has already refused to roll back the unprecedented price hike of Atta and rice.
The commonman will be worst hit by the hike in power tariff by 13.5 per cent which is unprecedented while there is acute shortage of power supply and unscheduled cuts being faced by people, he maintained.