Siddaramaiah lauds budget

Former deputy chief minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday lauded the 2008-09 state budget presented in the Lok Sabha on Monday, including the farm loan waiver.

With no additional tax burden, the budget had taken care of growth equity, a financial principle he had promoted as finance minister, he told reporters.

"The new budget takes care of all priority sectors including irrigation, power, drinking water, health, education, infrastructure development and social equity with higher allocations. This is a pro-people budget," Siddaramaiah, who has presented budgets seven times as finance minister in the previous governments, said.

Dismissing the opposition's criticisms, he said former deputy CM Yeddyurappa had waived only the crop loans limiting it to co-operative societies, while Finance Minister P Chidrambaram covered farm loans obtained from all financial institutions, including commercial banks. It covered all loans, including those taken for tractors, seeds, land development and for purchasing cattle.

He replied to a poser that political parties seem to be in a race to abolish farm loans more and more by saying it was one of the measures to help poor farmers in distress, though it was not the only solution.

"This, as a measure to help the distressed farmers, has been taken by a number of chief ministers. Devaraj Urs had waived loans taken from private money lenders," Siddaramaiah recalled.

Rejecting Yeddyurappa's claim he was the first to waive farm loans, Siddaramaiah said, apart from Devaraj Urs, chief ministers like Ramakrishna Hegde and S M Krishna had also resorted to this. At the Centre, even V P Singh had waived farmers' loans, he added.

Referring to the budget provisions, the former FM said allocations were higher by Rs 250 crore for agriculture, Rs 1,300 crore for irrigation, Rs 1,000 crore for education, and Rs 1,018 crore for the backward areas over the previous budget.

It proposed no new levies or increases. While the fiscal deficit has been taken care, a surplus of Rs 2,900 crore was shown. The plan size was up 22 per cent.

On the other hand, the commercial tax and stamp duty revenue had fallen by Rs 500 crore and Rs 600 crore respectively during the BJP-JD(S) coalition government. Even the VAT had netted revenue less than anticipated.