JAMMU: Describing the Union Budget as illusionary, hollow and a statement of fudged figures, a strong contingent of Panthers Party activists led by Harsh Dev Singh, Chairman JKNPP and Yashpal Kundal, State President Young Panthers staged demonstration against the outright disregard of J and K from the scope of the budget at Exhibition Ground Jammu on Tuesday.
Speaking on the occasion, Harsh said that the current budget announced by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had stored nothing for a common man which only appeared to be a damp squib amid high expectations from all the quarters.
Commenting upon the contours of the budget, he said that the budgetary announcement to reorganise agricultural policy to double the farmer’s income by 2022 had only created an illusion in the minds of the farming community. He wondered whether it was a provision in the Budget or a fairy tale prophecy made to the farmers since the mandate given to the GoI during the 2014 General Elections would only last till 2019. Singh pointed out that the interests of youth were altogether ignored from the scope of the budget, as the grandiloquent promise doled out by the Prime Minister Narender Modi for providing employment to 10 crore youth during the elections turned into a mere ‘hyperbolic teaser’. He maintained that the common man remained a worst sufferer with the soaring price rise of the essential commodities. He said that with the increase of service tax and of the products like gold, branded clothes, diesel and automobiles etc becoming costlier, the common masses had to bear the back breaking burden of inflation.
Singh expressed his anguish over the Budget for not announcing anything lucrative for the women folk as well. He said that with IT slabs remaining unchanged, no income tax relief or welfare schemes for the women could find place in the budgetary allocation.
Harsh expressed his strong indignation over the reprobate disregard by the GoI by ignoring the State of Jammu and Kashmir from the purview of the Budget announcement. He reminisced that J and K remained worst hit during the catastrophic rains and floods in September 2014 which consumed several lives, homes, crops and cattle stock causing havoc and chaos. He lambasted the NDA Government for not providing succor to the victims in the current Budget and admonished the former BJP-PDP for its gross failure to procure much hyped Rs. 44,000 crore special package from the Union Government for the relief and rehabilitation of the flood victims. He said that IIT and IIM were sanctioned for J and K in 2014 and 2015 budgets respectively but their fate remained uncertain so far. Likewise, the uncertainty over AIIMS still hovered despite the identification of lands in both regions following the mass agitation by the people of Jammu last year.
Singh revealed that the Union budget failed to mention the development of two ‘Smart Cities’ vis-à-vis Jammu and Srinagar which had shattered the aspirations of the people at large.
Others who joined the protest include Rajesh Padgotra, Manju Singh, Gagan Partap, Sham Gorkha, Purshotam Parihar, Chetan Sharma, Renu Singh, Nirmal Kishore, Neeraj Gupta, Kailash Mohan, Sardar N.P Singh, Anil Rakwal, Rajesh Gondhi, Khajoor Singh, Shankar Singh Chib, Ravinder Jamwal, Asha Rani, Udhayveer, Sanju and Inderpal.