PATNA: Even as Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar claimed that he was not aware of the union budget's proposals as he was on his tour, while deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav attacked the Narendra Modi government for not making any provision for the special package to the state.
Nitish, who is on tour to Supaul district during his ongoing ‘Samadhan Yatra’, told media persons, “When I will return (to the state capital), I will read the Union Budget thoroughly. At present, I am on tour but I listen to the budget speech every year. When I was an MP, I had an opportunity to listen to the budget speech in the House but even after that, I regularly listened to the budget speeches and watched proceedings irrespective of the government.”
Nitish said that he had listened to the last seven successive budget speeches made in the House.
"I would have listened this time too but my programme was already fixed and so could not listen. I did not know about it in advance,” he added.
On the other hand, his deputy and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav alleged that the Narendra Modi government had only befooled Bihar by not announcing a special package for the state.
What to speak of special category status to Bihar, the Centre had not given a special package to the state, he added.
Tejashwi tweeted, “In 2014, the BJP government in the centre had promised it would double the income of farmers, provide houses to all, jobs and employment to 80 crore people by 2022. Now, it is 2023 but its habit of gimmickry is still not gone. BJP again cheated Bihar from where it had won 100 per cent seats in the last Lok Sabha election.”
Tejashwi told reporters that Bihar had no hope from the Union Budget as no promise was kept. He alleged that even tax rebates announced in the budget were not more than an eyewash. "There are a lot of differences between the present-day budget and the budgets tabled before the merger of the railway budget with the general budget," he remarked.
Earlier, people used to listen to the budget speeches with enthusiasm, he added. Tejaswhi said it was a matter of shame for BJP MPs from Bihar as the state had not been given anything in the budget. Earlier, the Centre used to tell the people about its work plan minutely but now everything was over.
Hitting back at Tejashwi for his criticism of the Union Budget, Bihar BJP president Sanjay Jaiswal alleged that Tejashwi had no understanding of the budget. He said Bihar`s growth rate was 15 per cent during 2020-21 when NDA was in power. The growth had stalled when RJD was in power from 1990 to 2005.
Former deputy chief minister and Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Kumar Modi said that as per proposals in the Union Budget Bihar will get Rs.13,000 crore without any interest for a period of 50 years. In addition, the people of Bihar will get benefits under PM Awas Yojna for which a fund allocation of Rs.99,000 crore has been proposed in the budget for 2023-24 fiscal.