JAIPUR: Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Friday committed a huge faux pas during his budget presentation in the Assembly as he read last year’s speech for seven-eight minutes, leading to ruckus and multiple adjournments of the House.
The mileage he was hoping to draw from an inflation relief package and a string of sops in the last budget of his tenure got lost in the mix-up. Rajasthan is expected to face Assembly elections by the end of the year.
The Assembly had to be adjourned twice for an hour before the actual budget could be presented. While the BJP claimed the budget had already been leaked, Gehlot later rejected the charge and attributed the mix-up to human error.
This was the first time in history that an old budget speech had been read out in any Assembly in the country. When Gehlot began by mentioning a couple of new schemes, including 125 days of employment under the Indira Gandhi Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme, both sides of the aisle realised it was part of last year’s announcements.
While Government Chief Whip Mahesh Joshi went to the CM and alerted him, BJP members trooped to the Well of the House after the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Opposition pointed to the old speech while alleging that the budget was leaked and demanded Gehlot’s apology.
When the proceedings resumed, Gehlot claimed, “I got an extra page by mistake. I misread it. Where did the question of leak?...I feel sorry for it.” The CM later summoned Chief Secretary Usha Sharma and expressed displeasure over negligence of the officers who gave him the budget papers. A special probe has been launched over the mess. In his budget, Gehlot made several populist announcements like free power to consumers up to 100 units per month and LPG cylinders to 76 lakh families at Rs 500.