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Updated June 4th, 2021 at 19:06 IST

'Revised' Kerala Budget: Congress says Left govt destroyed budget's sanctity; BJP let down

VD Satheesan tore into the budget that was presented by the new Finance Minister KN Balagopal & accused the latter of filling his speech with political comments

Reported by: Koushik Narayanan
Kerala
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Kerala's Leader of opposition (LoP) VD Satheesan tore into the 'revised' budget that was presented by the new Finance Minister KN Balagopal and accused the latter of filling his speech with political comments. Presenting the first budget after the CM Pinarayi Vijayan-led LDF had returned to power for the second consecutive time, Minister KN Balagopal unveiled a Rs 20,000 cr package as COVID relief apart from the state government allocating Rs 1500 crore for the procurement of COVID vaccines for those above 18 years. Terming both the policy address & budget speech as a political stunt, Congress' VD Satheesan accused the Kerala Finance Minister of including political statements in his speech leading to the loss of the sanctity of the budget speech. 

"Our finance minister has included political comments in his budget speech. Both the policy address and the budget speech has become a political stunt. Budget is the annual financial statement," Kerala LoP V D Satheesan said.

BJP disappointed with new Kerala budget

Meanwhile, the MLA-less BJP expressed disappointment in the budget presented by the LDF govt and accused the state government of renaming & rolling out the Centre's projects. Kerala BJP president K Surendhran noted that the Karnataka government had deposited money directly into the account of auto drivers, labourers and wayside vendors and asked why the Kerala government had not taken any step in that direction.

Meanwhile, Balagopal, who met the media after the budget presentation, said nothing has changed from the last budget. "Those budget proposals will continue.We have made some addition to that considering the COVID-19 situation and to boost the economy of the state.Health is our priority, then food. After that we need to revive our economy and for that we need more jobs."

"In order to achieve that, our aim is to give thrust to the agriculture, industries, tourism, IT, knowledge economy sectors," Balagopal said.

Key highlights of Kerala's budget

  • ₹20,000 crore COVID-19 revival package
  • Steps to expedite coastal highway project
  • No coercive steps to ensure tax remittance
  • The Finance Minister reported a revenue inflow of ₹1,30,981.06 crore
  • Monthly stipend of ₹2,000 to orphaned children till they attain the age of 18 in addition to the one-time payment of ₹. 3 lakhs
  • Government Medical College Hospitals in Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode to have state-of-the-art isolation facilities to treat transmissible diseases like COVID-19, ebola
  • The Institute of Advanced Virology to spearhead the State's efforts to boost vaccine research and production.
  • Allocation of ₹50 lakh for the proposed Centre for Disease Control

MoS Muraleedharan slams Cong, Left

Union Minister of State V Muraleedharan on Thursday had said that the Kerala Legislative Assembly should not be converted into a propaganda platform for bashing PM Modi and claimed that the opposition Congress and the Left party are in a competition to prove that they defeated BJP. MoS Muraleedharan said that the “jihadi vote bank of Kerala” has been transferred to the Left front during the recent elections and the Left wants to get it back by criticising the Narendra Modi government. He added that the CPI(M) chief had promised to provide free vaccine to everyone during the elections. “After inviting global tenders, the government is now asking Centre for free vaccines. So was the earlier announcement to hoodwink the people to get votes," Muraleedharan said.

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Published June 4th, 2021 at 19:06 IST

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