Thaindian News

Chandigarh, March 16 (IANS) Former Punjab chief minister and state Congress president Amarinder Singh Wednesday said the state budget presented Monday contained “fatal flaws” and needs to be redrafted.

“The budget, in its present form, is not acceptable to the Congress as it is full of lies and fudged figures and hence the party will not participate in the debate on the budget,” he said.

The budget was presented by the state’s first woman finance minister and former professor of economics, Upinderjit Kaur, Monday.

Raising the issue in the state assembly here, Amarinder Singh said that passing the budget in its present form would not serve any useful purpose.

“Pending passage of the budget, the government should seek a vote on account for three months. The Akali Dal government should bring out a white paper on the true state of Punjab finances and the measures it proposes to undertake to rectify the fiscal mess the state is in,” he said.

As the Congress legislators walked out of the house, he made it clear that the party will not participate in any discussion on the budget in its present form.

Amarinder Singh also demanded that the government constitute a joint committee of the assembly to conduct a thorough probe into the transfer of government land to private entities in the name of infrastructure development.

Talking to reporters later, Amarinder Singh and the Congress Legislative Party leader Rajinder Kaur Bhattal said that the Congress members had walked out of the assembly as the Akali Dal-led government was not prepared to debate the fudged figures in the budget.

The budget is the “biggest fudge and fraud ever attempted in the fiscal history of the state,” Amarinder Singh said.

“To know this, you only need to compare the actuals for 2001-10 with the Revised Estimates (RE) for 2010-11 and the Budget Estimates (BE) for 2011-12,” he remarked.

He said the BE 2009-10 projected a revenue deficit of Rs.3,787.73 crore, but it is actually Rs.5,251.36 crore.

“Shockingly, the revenue deficit as per RE 2010-11 is projected at Rs.3,705.18 crore and at a still lower level of Rs.3,378.99 crore in the BE 2011-12, that too in the face of ever-widening gap between revenue receipts and revenue expenditure,” he pointed out.

“This is nothing short of magic,” he added.

Questioning the claim of the Akali Dal government that Punjab is the fastest growing state in the country, Amarinder Singh said: “How can Punjab be one of the fastest growing states of the country if its rate of growth is below the average trend line of all the states put together?”

He said the Akali Dal government was committing financial harakiri by raising loans to run even the day-to-day affairs of the state.