In the Himachal Pradesh Assembly, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu responded to the discussion on the budget on Friday. During this, opposition members, dissatisfied with the CM’s reply, created a ruckus and walked out of the House shouting slogans. Responding to the discussion on othe budgetet that went on for four days, the Chief Minister mentioned the loans taken during the previous BJP government and the various grants received from the Central Government. The Chief Minister said that the previous government did not give the arrears of the new pay scale to the employees and pensioners despite having sufficient funds.
Distributed sweets to gain benefit in the elections. The present Congress government is entangled in paying the principal and interest of the loan of Rs 40,000 crore taken during the previous government. Opposition members objected to this statement of the Chief Minister. Walked out of the House shouting ruckus and slogans. The Chief Minister said that the Himachal government will take a policy decision within a month for compassionate dependents; priority will be given to widowed sisters.
The Chief Minister said that when the Leader of the Opposition started speaking on this subject, he was only talking about expenditure. It was only after I interrupted him that he himself admitted that the receipts were low. It is clear that on the basis of resources, the blueprint of the expenditure to be incurred in the next financial year is prepared, which is proposed in the House as a budget. It is natural that if the resources are less, the budget size will also be less. The resources of Rs 3,000 crore were directly reduced for RDG. Apart from this, the limit set by the Central Government has reduced a lot in 2024-25 as compared to 2020-21, 2021-22, and 2022-23 and on top of that, due to the implementation of OPS by our government, the loan limit of about Rs 1700 crore was further educed. All this has been accepted by the Honorable Leader of the Opposition after I interrupted him, which is on the record of the Honorable House. When the Leader of the Opposition has accepted all this, then his criticism regarding the budget size does not matter.
