BJP, Cong MLAs spar over Budget in House

Claims and counterclaims by the BJP and the Congress MLAs were the highlight of the discussion on the Governor’s address in the Haryana Assembly here today.

While the BJP legislators claimed that the Budget set the tone for the future, their Congress MLAs termed the Budget as visionless and jugglery of statistics.

Leading the Congress attack, Adampur MLA Chander Prakash termed the Budget as manipulation of statistics alleging that nothing concrete had been spelled out in the proposal for various sections of society, the Scheduled Castes, backward classes.

Speaker ‘angry’ with officers

As soon as the House resumed post-lunch discussion on the Governor’s address, Speaker Harvinder Kalyan seemed quite upset at the absence of senior officers in the Officers’ Gallery. A miffed Kalyan said the officers were supposed to be present during the Vidhan Sabha proceedings. Though a couple of officers walked into the gallery, yet a majority of them were conspicuous by their absence.

While, on the one hand, the government was claiming that the state’s per capita income was an impressive Rs 3.53 lakh,on the other hand, the state had added nearly 37 lakh BPL beneficiaries’ cards to the list of beneficiaries since 2022, taking the total count to over 46.45 lakh beneficiaries.

Congress MLAs Induraj Narwal (Baroda) and Balraj Dangi (Meham) said most of the projects for which the BJP government was claiming credit were either initiated or completed during the Congress regime. However, Kalka MLA Shakti Rani Sharma put a spirited defence terming the Budget as futuristic which, she claimed, would take care of the hopes and aspirations all sections of society and prove to be a milestone in Haryana’s history. “The initiatives in the Budget, including ‘Lado Laxmi Yojana, the Department of Future and Artificial Intelligence Mission, would put Haryana on the higher trajectory of growth,” Sharma claimed.

Terming the Budget as a “progressive document”, Savitri Jindal, Independent MLA from Hisar, who is extending support to the BJP government said the Budget estimates took care of all sections of society.

Former minister and BJP MLA from Ballabhgarh Mool Chand Sharma said the Budget estimates reflected the BJP philosophy of “Sab ka Saath, Sab ka Vikas.”