STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: While painting the gloomy picture of the State, former Minister of state for Finance and independent MLA from Udhampur Assembly segment Pawan Gupta on Monday labelled the budget presented by Finance Minister Dr Haseeb Drabu as a document of failed promises, full of continuous departures and inconsistencies.
Listing out number of failed promises, Gupta reminded his senior colleague on numerous occasions how he has failed to deliver on his own budget proposals of the past and instead of adopting course correction, trying to camouflage the real picture of the State finances by inflating the figures.
Gupta said in all the three budgets they have shown an unfunded gap. Now it is clear all the receipt figures have been inflated right from the beginning. Giving an example, Gupta said in the CAPEX budget a figure of Rs 11246 crores was shown but on the ground a sum of Rs 7331 crores out of the CAPEX budget was spent. What it means he asked. It clearly shows 53 per cent of the budget was inflated for the capital budget.
He said in the last budget speech there was no mention of resources and how this additional mobilisation of Rs 1000 crores will be done. Now in this budget speech he has admitted that the same has not come.
Quoting figures from the budget speech Gupta claimed the fiscal deficit is coming more than 18 percent, which is a complete violation of FRBM Act. He said it should have been less than 3 percent but no effort was made to control it and keep the cost of running the government under check.
Referring to power budget Gupta said earlier they had shown receipts under electrical energy head to the tune of Rs 3540 crores and later inflated the same to Rs 4740 crores. But i can say with all authority they are not likely to cross 1700 crores. He targeted the Finance Minister of adopting innovative methods to mislead the legislators. He said the government is buying the energy and selling the energy at the same time.
This has been done to show we are controlling the loss trajectory to paint rosy picture in the eyes of the babus in New Delhi but they have failed to do so. He said they have shown recovery of loans and recoveries to the tune of Rs 5305 crores but earlier it was only 5 crores.
Gupta said going through the budget documents i can only say the fiscal parameters are very worrisome. Our debts are crossing 50 percent of the total GDP and it clearly indicates an extremely bad position of the economy. Referring to past promises and budget announcements Gupta said on the issue of restructuring of PSU’s nothing substantial has been done, the talk of outsourcing Garages remained a non starter, no headway was achieved as regards completing GPS tracking to control pilferage of ration supplies but nothing was done. He said no significant progress was achieved over Dal Development Bonds in a bid to restore it to its pristine glory. There is no final word on the white paper on state finances, no change in FRBM act was proposed as mentioned in the previous budget. On the question of 61,000 casual workers the government is still playing game of musical chairs by first announcing a cabinet sub-committee, then evolving a consultation mechanism and now again forming a committee headed by Chief secretary while giving temporary relief to those who have donated land for the PHE/Irrigation department schemes.
