Lucknow:
Opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh on Monday termed the state budget an election stunt that fails to live up to the aspirations of the youth, farmers, women and the unemployed.
The Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government presented a Rs 5.5-lakh crore budget for 2021-22 in the Assembly with a target of making Uttar Pradesh self-reliant. With the Assembly election a year away, the budget includes new schemes worth Rs 27,598 crore.
”This budget is a bundle of lies and just an election stunt. The budget is disappointing and would serve no purpose,” Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Assembly Ram Govind Chaudhary said.
The state budget has not just turned paperless but it also is ”jobless” for the youth and ”income-less” for the farmers, Chaudhary said. The budget has been dedicated to all-round development but no one talks about what all-round development means, he added.
Chaudhary also expressed unhappiness over the delay in uploading the paperless budget to the tablet computers of the legislators. He said it was supposed to be made available soon after its presentation but there was a 20-25 minutes’ delay.
While Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav said the budget does not meet the expectations of the poor and the farmers, BSP president Mayawati termed it ”extremely disappointing”, and said it just has promises for the people but nothing to address unemployment.
Asked for his take on the budget, Yadav remarked, ”Khel khatam, paisa hajam (game over, money usurped).” This was the fifth and last budget of the government led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his game is over now, the SP leader claimed.
”Poor and farmers were expecting big relief, but their expectations were not met. Now, the government has no time left and people of the state have seen what they did in the past four years,” he added.
Congress Legislature Party leader Aradhana Misra said the government was patting itself on the back over a paperless budget but the budget is actually ”truth-less”.
”It has no scheme for farming and farmers. There is not a single word on farmers’ problems. There is also nothing for the youth,” she said. The government could have made some provisions for farmers, but by not doing so, it has proved its insensitivity, Misra added.
Taking to Twitter, Mayawati said, ”The BJP government’s budget presented in the UP assembly today, like the central government’s budget, is extremely disappointing to the state, especially in terms of ending the cruelty of unemployment, and creating jobs. Like in the central government’s budget, in the UP budget too, an attempt has been made to make promises and make people have beautiful dreams.” She alleged that the Adityanath government’s record on fulfilling its promises to the 23 crore people of Uttar Pradesh has not been ”satisfactory” despite the fact that both the state and the Centre have BJP-ruled dispensations.
”This budget is extremely disappointing especially in terms of addressing the problems of the poor, weaker sections and farmers,” she said in her second tweet in Hindi.
Leader of BSP Legislature Party Lalji Verma said farmers were hoping that the government would make some major announcements for them in the budget, especially related to their problems and demands, but it turned out to be a betrayal.
He said the budget was an attempt to mislead the people ahead of the Assembly polls in the state.
SP spokesperson Rajendra Choudhary claimed that the budget would turn the tide in favour of ”AY from YA” (Akhilesh Yadav from Yogi Adityanath) in the 2022 Assembly election. Terming the budget disappointing, Anupam Mishra, national spokesperson of the Rashtriya Lok Dal said, ”We have not expected this type of budget as it is not meeting the expectation of the poor and the farmers. We don’t see any ray of hope for the farmers. Surprisingly this budget is not even worth of being called an election budget. There is nothing for farmers, unemployed youth, women. It is just a betrayal of the people of the state in the name of ‘Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishvaas’.” President of Rashtriya Kisan Manch, Shekhar Dixit, said the budget lacked concrete welfare measure for farmers, and is only a new ‘lollypop’ for them.
