Guwahati: Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi has termed the Union budget presented by the finance minister Arun Jaitley as insensitive to the need and aspirations of the Northeastern states and being with regional bias.
“There is practically nothing for Assam and the Northeast in the first Union Budget of Narendra Modi government. Even the 10 per cent mandatory allocation for the region has not been fulfilled,” Gogoi said here on Friday.
Gogoi said while the Union budget failed to make any special provision for the backward Northeast region, it even did not fulfill the 10 per cent mandatory allocation under the Non- Lapsable Central Pool of Resources (NLCPR).
“The Northeastern states together should have got about Rs 1,79,489 crore under the NLCPR out of the Rs 17,94,892 crore total budgeted Plan and non-Plan expenditure. But what the region actually got is just about Rs 53,706 crore. This is gross regional disparity,” Gogoi pointed out.
“Not even a single rupee has been allotted for the Brahmaputra in comparison to several thousand crores allocated for the Ganga. Narendra Modi and his BJP party had only shed crocodile tears for Assam’s woes during the election campaign. Once the BJP managed to win the votes, they forgot about the people of Assam,” he said.
“During election, they promised to take care of the floods and erosion caused by the Brahmaputra River. But there is nothing in the budget. They promised us an AIIMS. But what we got is just one agricultural research centre,” Gogoi said.
Gogoi recalled that the two previous UPA governments had given Assam several educational institutions. “We had earlier got a National Institute of Design, a Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology, a cooperative university. We asked for an IIM, but this government did not give us one,” he said.
He said the Union Budget also did not respond to Assam government’s sustained request for revision of petroleum royalty to Assam.
Referring allocation for roads and railway projects, Gogoi said those allocations were nothing extraordinary as those allocations were must for the ongoing projects. The Union budget allocated Rs 1,000 crore for development of rail connectivity and Rs 100 crore for organic farming in the Northeast.
