New Delhi: Seeking to puncture the Aam Aadmi Party’s ‘ideal budget’ for Delhi, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said budget making is simple when the state does not have to pay for police, defence and farm sector, and asserted that instead of lecturing, the expenditure on full-page advertisements to promote Kejriwal government should also be counted.
Replying to the debate on Budget in the Rajya Sabha, Sitharaman said, “There is no expenditure of police, army (defence) and on farmers because central government takes care of it. Therefore, budget (of Delhi Government) is good.”
She also stated that the central government does not give full page advertisement in newspapers.
“If that budget (funds) are saved then it could be used for the pollution issue of Delhi. Do I need to learn that? They are lecturing us that we should learn from our budget or some else document,” she stated.
She noted AAP leader comments that look at Aam Aadmi Party Budget (of Delhi Government), it will tell you how one can make a good budget.
“Had I learned from that budget my defence, farm and police budget would have been funded by someone else. It is easy to make a budget then,” Sitharaman said.
Earlier participating in the debate on Budget, AAP member Sanjay Singh said, “the Arvind Kejriwal-led government recently presented a budget allocating 22 per cent of the expenditure for education and 13 per cent each for transport, road and health sectors.
“We provide 300 units of electricity free to the citizens of Delhi in a 4 per cent budget. Learn something from Arvind Kejriwal. What do you do? Politics on film posters. I would like to demand through you (chair of the house), stop making a joke of the pain of Kashmiri Pandits and make provision in this budget that your government will spend at least Rs 20,000 crore on the rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits.”
He told the house that when Delhi (AAP) government came it had presented a Rs 30,000-crore budget and now it is Rs 75,000 crore.
He suggested, “instead of criticising Kejriwal, call him to sit with you, he is an (former) income tax officer. He will teach you how to make budget on education, health and electricity. In just four per cent budget of electricity we provide free 300 units of electricity.”
Singh alleged that the during election days, the BJP government keeps prices of petrol, cooking gas, PNG and CNG low among all other things and make efforts to increase the price after elections are over.
He stated that the BJP government has some secret pact with inflation or price rise.
PTI