Political budget laced with a bundle of lies to cover up mistakes: Bommai

Bengaluru: Former Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has presented a political budget laced with a bundle of lies  to cover up his failures and also created a record of borrowing Rs 1.5 lakh crore while presenting the budget for the 15th time.

Reacting to the state budget here on Friday, he said the budget had been used to oppose the Central Government and destroyed it’s  sanctity.  There are various forums to take the funds from the Government of India like the GST and the Niti Aayog. Without attending a meeting of the Niti Aayog even once and attacking the government in the budget just for the sake of politics. It was highly condemnable that the budget had been used for this purpose.

The former CM said compared to last year, only Rs 1000 crore had been spent out of Rs 25000 crore borrowed. Last year, the capital expenditure had been Rs 54000 crore and this year, it was increased to Rs 55000 crore.

Borrowing loan at high rate of interest, the government was spending money on unproductive expenses. The State’s worst financial position was very much seen in the budget. There had been a shortage of Rs 14000 crore in tax collection as the CM has rightly said they had set a target of Rs 1.75 lakh crore tax collection but only Rs 1.61 lakh crore, a shortage of Rs 14000 crore.

The state has received all the grants from the central government. But the state’ s tax collection has nose dived. To cover up this, the state government has presented the budget with a bundle of lies. There was no grants for SCP/TSP and also to education and irrigation. The Congress has made Karnataka a bankrupt.

 The BJP leader said they were making allegations against the Central Government just for the election purposes.

The CM has not reserved the money for the Krishna, Bhadra and Mahadayi projects. An injustice has been meted in water resources. In total, it was a cheating for the SCs/STs and a zero budget for the students, farmers and women. For the first time in the history of Karnataka, the Opposition party has boycotted the budget presentation. The anti-people policies of the incumbent government would be placed before the people.