NEW DELHI: Amid the ongoing confrontation between the Centre and the Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi government, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has approved the fiscal Budget of the national capital and conveyed the same to the Delhi government, sources at L-G House said on Tuesday.
The development came hours after Delhi Finance Minister Kailash Gahlot announced earlier in the day that the Budget file had been resent to MHA. Hitting out at Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, sources at Delhi Raj Niwas said that the AAP government was “very deliberately making false statements with the sole purpose of misleading the people of Delhi” in a bid to distract them from its “failures”.
“Arvind Kejriwal, his ministers, and the Aam Admi Party are very deliberately making false statements with the sole purpose of misleading the people of Delhi.....he has been saying that the Centre has blocked a “state’s” Budget. This is patently false. Delhi is a Union Territory and not a state and therefore it is fully a part and parcel of the Government of India. Moreover, the Budget has not been blocked,” a senior official said.
“The Constitution provides that previous consent and approval of the President of India is required before laying the Budget of Delhi in the Legislative Assembly and this has been going on for the past 28 years without fail,” he added.
Sources said that fixing the date for the presentation of the Budget before seeking the President’s approval for the Budget was in itself a wrong practice. They also said that the L-G had made observations quite ahead of the day of the Budget presentation but the city government did not address it timely.
“The Chief Minister was aware that the L-G has approved the financial statement and made certain observations since March 9 when the L-G secretariat sent the file to him. However, none of the concerns raised by L-G were addressed,” the senior official said.
Meanwhile, the sources also said that Kejriwal ‘misled’ people from a media platform when he said that salaries will not be paid to the employees of the Delhi Government since the Centre has ‘stopped the Budget’. “It may be known that the current Financial Year lapses on 31.03.2023 and every employee will get his salary irrespective of the Budget being passed or not,” the senior official noted.