MAPUSA
Congress MLA, Digambar Kamat on Wednesday dubbed the state budget as a mixture of all earlier budgets and said it has no innovative ideas.
“This budget appears to sell dreams to people. People thought that the first budget would have some innovative schemes for them. They had hopes of some new projects. But this government is not concerned about anyone. There is no accountability and no responsibility,” Kamat said.
He said the government had promised to bring reforms in taxation but with no scope for new taxes the financial position of the State was looking bleak.
“Last year public debt stood at Rs 20,000 crore. Don’t know where it will reach this year. We are heading for serious concern as far as State finances are concerned,” he said.
The Margao MLA informed that along with the budget the government presented the action-taken report of the previous government which was incidentally headed by the same CM.
“Out of the total 252 announcements made in the last budget, only 111 have been implemented. So, only 44 per cent of the total announcements have been fulfilled while 56 per cent were not. This is the ground reality,” he observed.
He said the government talks about good governance when it has failed to implement the Right of Citizens to time-bound delivery of the Public Services Act.
“What is good governance if people have to visit offices two or three times to get their work done?” he asked.
Pointing to large gaps in the financial statement, Kamat said in the last two previous budgets the capital expenditure was shown as around Rs 1,700 crore and Rs 2000 crore but this time the CM has pegged it to Rs 7000 crore.
“It’s huge. Don’t know how he will do that,” he said.
