Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar hailed the state budget presented on Tuesday, while his ally CPI(ML) Liberation and the opposition BJP expressed disappointment, though for different reasons.
Kumar described the budget tabled by Finance Minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary in the assembly as people-friendly and progressive. “It would speed up the state's growth rate. The total size of the projected expenditure in the budget is Rs 2,61,885 crore. Of this, Rs 1,00,029.73 crore would be spent on various state government schemes and Rs 1,61,855.67 crore on the establishment and committed expenditure,” Kumar said in a statement.
Senior BJP leader and former state finance minister Sushil Modi termed the Mahagathbandhan government’s budget as ‘status quoist’ and dependent on the Centre’s assistance. “Out of the total projected expenditure, Bihar will get Rs 1.56 lakh crore (60 per cent of the total amount) from the Centre in 2023-24. Therefore, the Nitish Kumar government is totally dependent on the Centre’s assistance,” he said.
The CPI(ML) Liberation, which supports the government from outside, said that promises made by the Mahagathbandhan before the 2020 assembly polls should have been incorporated into the budget. The promises include regularisation of ad-hoc teachers/lecturers and welfare schemes for migrant labourers, said the party’s Bihar secretary Kunal.
He, however, welcomed the budget proposal of filling up 63,900 vacancies in different departments of the state government. Tabling the Rs 2.61 lakh crore budget before the state assembly, Choudhary flagged concerns like a drop in grants in aid received from the Centre, compared to the previous year, though Bihar's share in central taxes saw a rise.
