With an eye apparently set on the assembly elections scheduled next year, Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi, who also holds the additional portfolio of finance, today presented a tax-free populist budget with sops for almost all sections.
Some of the measures announced in the budget attempting to please one and all are 10 kg subsidisied rice per month for BPL families, slashed entry tax on sugar, fish and eggs to control price rise. The government has also announced 30 per cent of government jobs for unemployed youths from rural areas. The budegt announces a Rs. 3,464 crore deficit.
The budget reduced entry tax on fish and eggs by 4 percentge points, sugar by 1 percentage point and on textile by 2 percentage points. Entry tax on garmetns have also been reduced from 4 per cent to 2 per cent.
Also, taxes on tea, medical equipments, pressure cookers, brass utensils, cups and glasses, plywood, turmeric, local fireworks were slashed in the budget. The Budget has also proposed to earmark Rs. 100 crore for repair and contruction of roads in Guwahati city, besides adding another 200 city busses to the existing fleet.
Gogoi said that the state had achieved an impressive growth of 6.16 per cent in the year 2008-09 and revised estimates for the present fiscal was 9 per cent.
With exorbitant price rise fast becoming an albatross for the Gogoi government, the budget has proposed to set up a “machinery” to regulate the market and rein in price-rise.
With women empowerment buzzing the air, the budget has proposed 50 percent reservation of seats for them in panchayats, besides reserving 20 percent government supplies and contracts not exceeding Rs.1 million for women.
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The budget also announced Rs.10,000 as marriage assistance for girls living below the poverty line.
Gogoi has also proposed to set up all-women university in the state, besides two engineering colleges in Dhemaji and Goalpara and two medical colleges in Diphu in Karbi Anglong district and Nagaon district respectively.