UP Budget snippets

`Kisan' is back in focus in UP . Chief minister Akhilesh Yadav reached out to the Samajwadi Party's core constituency through his budget proposals. Akhilesh presented a Rs.3.02 lakh crore budget ­ 10.2% bigger than the previous year ­ which had farm and rural sector as its thrust areas. The SP government kept fiscal deficit at 2.96%, and set aside Rs.9,388.79 crore for new schemes. From declaring its decision to observe 2015-16 as Kisan Varsh (year of the farmer), setting up more than 1,000 agri junctions for the sale of agriculture produce, and offering a 5% interest subsidy on farm loans, the government made its intent to take the last mile development connectivity to villages. There are no new taxes. Laptops are back but in a scaled-down manner.
Delivering his budget speech on Tuesday , Akhilesh claimed UP recorded a growth rate of 5%, which is 0.3% higher than the national average, and said his government had decided to pump in additional funds in infrastructure, roads, highways, power and health sectors to ensure the benefits trickled down to the last village.
Another point that stands out in the budget is that the government appeared focused on giving an impetus to schemes that were already announced by the state in the previous fiscals instead of announcing too many fresh schemes. Akhilesh said, “The first two years of our government were focused on fulfilling our manifesto promises.Now, our focus has shifted to ensuring the implementation of what we started.“
Promising to focus on rural electrification of nearly 1 lakh `dark' villages, the government made an outlay of Rs.25,764 crore for the power sector. While 24-hour power has been promised to urban areas, rural areas have been promised 16 hours of electricity supply . The government has also set aside Rs.1,152 crore in the agriculture sector for settling cane dues to farmers.Akhilesh also said the government plans to build more CC roads, and create a stronger network of ambulances to offer emergency health care facilities to rural masses. The chief minister also announced an outlay of Rs.1,533 crore towards the implementation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Swachh Bharat campaign, where funds for building each toilet has been increased from Rs.10,000 to Rs.12,000.
While consolidated allocations for infrastructure development were pegged at Rs.51517 cr, and for highways and bridges at Rs.17872 cr, the government also set aside Rs.7881 cr for strengthening irrigation networks in UP.
If the farm sector is a large beneficiary of budgetary allocations, funds were also earmarked for urban development. Calling it a “balanced budget“, experts pointed out Akhilesh steered clear, for the first time, of offering tax sops or waivers to all but the farm sector. This means that the government has neither imposed new taxes, nor reduced existing state tax rates being implemented across sectors.
It wasn't as if the populist measures were kept out entirely; the free laptop scheme and the Kanya Vidya Dhan (KVD) made a comeback, but with considerably slashed budgets and tighter norms. While budget allocation for KVD is Rs.300 crore, the free laptop scheme has been given a Rs.100 crore budget.
The government also announced a Rs.2,776 crore budgetary allocation for minority welfare, only marginally increased from last year's allocation. It also set aside Rs.2,727 crore corpus for implementing the Samajwadi Pension scheme, which will reach out to 5 lakh more women beneficiaries in the next fiscal, Akhilesh said.
In comparison to the previous year, UP's allocation to the flagship Samajwadi Pension scheme has increased marginally from Rs.2,424 crore to Rs.2,727 crore this year. The government's dream projects ­ the Lucknow Metro rail and Agra-Lucknow Greenfield expressway--also have considerable budgetary allocations. While the Lucknow Metro has got an allocation of Rs.425 core, up from previous year's Rs.95 crore, the expressway project has been granted Rs.3,000 crore, down from last year's Rs.3,280 crore allocation.
In a bid to overcome regional imbalances, the state government has also announced has also announced a Rs.800 cr Bundelkhand package, in addition to funds earmarked for special schemes in Purvanchal. Both announcements were also made last year.