In an open letter to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who will be presenting the State Budget on March 7, BJP State president B.Y. Vijayendra has called for fiscal prudence.
In his four-page letter, Mr. Vijayendra has flagged issues of the benefits of guarantee schemes not reaching beneficiaries and diversion of funds from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes sub plan for the schemes. He demanded that there be no diversion from the SC-ST sub plan for guarantee schemes this year.
He also said that over the past two years, the Chief Minister had increased the State’s liabilities by nearly ₹2 lakh crore and the people were anxious about the growing debt. He said borrowed money has to be spent on capital expenditure and not revenue expenditure.
He alleged that the Chief Minister had brought a State known for its fiscal prudence to a situation where the government hasn’t been able to pay contractors’ bills, power bills and salaries for employees. He pointed out that various government departments have pending bills to the tune of ₹6,000 crore to various escoms and the government was yet to pay ₹7,000 crore to various RTCs.
Mr. Vijayendra also condemned the rise in bus and metro fares and the hike in prices of milk, fuel, and other essential commodities and demanded that the government should not hike prices of any commodities further, even as proposals for revision of milk prices and power tariff are pending before the government. He claimed if the government had not written to the fare revision committee, there wouldn’t have been a hike in metro fares.
He further said that the effective implementation of Central schemes depended on matching grants by the State government and appealed to Mr. Siddaramaiah to allot more funds for the full utilisation of Cntral schemes. He also called for more investment on the education sector.
