Shimla, July 05: Describing the annual budget of the state as a "confused element", former Himachal Pradesh minister from the Bhartiya Janata Party J P Nadda today said it was aimed at misleading the people. "The claim of Chief Minister V B Singh that the budget was reform-oriented, lacked conviction. It was a usual status quo budget which would put burden on the farmers and other sections of the society and increase the debt liability," Nadda told reporters here today.
The budget gives no direction to reduce the huge deficit and it appears that the government would be forced to raise loans amounting Rs 3900 crore during the year, he said.
Structural reforms and correctives, referred to by the chief minister and mild taxation was an exercise undertaken under compulsion as the finances of the state were being closely monitored by the Central government.
Nadda said that the government was using fiscal reforms as a ploy to impose fresh taxes and added that it had no option but to sign the MoU on reforms with the Centre which contained several anti-employee clauses.
The ban on recruitment and downsizing of the employees would further squeeze the employment opportunities and aggravate unemployment. There was no clear-cut strategy in the budget to solve the problem of unemployment, which was one of the main issues in the assembly polls, he said.
He said that committed liabilities of the government were increasing and there was hardly any increase in the budgetary provisions for developmental works. Bureau Report