Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh today hailed the state's budget 2018-19 as a milestone one, with its focus on multi-sectoral growth, and expressed the confidence that it would put the state on the path of high growth.
However, opposition Akali Dal and AAP dubbed the budget as "directionless".
Former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal dismissed the budget as "directionless, meaningless and devoid of vision".
Dismissing as totally unfounded and misleading the statements of SAD-BJP on the budget, the Chief Minister told mediapersons that this budget would lead the state back on the path of growth and prosperity to bring it out of the vicious cycle of fiscal mess into which the previous government had plunged it.
The budget proposals for 2018-19 were presented before the Assembly here today by Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal.
Amarinder challenged the Akalis and the BJP to list even one tangible success they had achieved in terms of development and prosperity of the state "during their decade-long misrule".
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"They had completely ruined the state's economy with their ill-conceived policies," he pointed out, adding that the current budget was not only progressive, balanced and people-friendly but provided a roadmap to put the derailed economy on the track by ensuring all-round development of the state.
The current budget had taken due care of all sectors of state, be agriculture, industry, health, education, employment generation or, above all, the welfare of disadvantaged sections of the society, said the Chief Minister.
Amarinder recalled that his government's maiden budget last year had been an endeavour to improve the fiscal health of the state through meticulous long term-planning to restore financial discipline in line with the provisions of FRBM Act-2003, "which the previous SAD-BJP Government had blatantly violated to pursue its vested interests."
"The budget documentary in fact reads likea White Paper on the government's black deeds of the past one year. These black deeds include betrayal of every section of society, particularly the farmers, the dalits, the youth, the senior citizens and women."
Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal alleged that the "budget is a written proof of this government's betrayal of every section of Punjabi society, particularly of the farmers, the farm labour, the dalits, the youth, the employees, the women and the senior citizens."
Sukhbir Badal said that the government claims that it will levy no fresh taxes "but then it talks of additional resource mobilization of Rs 9,000 crore, which is a clear proof that it will burden the Punjabis with taxes later."
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