Itanagar:Opposition BJP on Monday staged a walkout from the Arunachal Pradesh Assembly protes-ting the tabling of Vote-on-Account by Chief Minister Nabam Tuki instead of a regular budget on March 5.
Opposition Leader Tamiyo Taga led the protest and announced his party’s decision to boycott the rest of the proceedings of the session ending on Tuesday. The House later passed the Vote-on-Account by voice vote in the absence of the opposition. Earlier, partici-pating in the discussion Taga wanted to know the emergency situations which compelled Tuki, who also holds the Finance portfolio, to present a Vote-on-Acco-unt for four months begin-ning April 1.
Rubbishing Tuki’s earlier assertion that this was due to non-receipt of fund from the ‘Niti Ayog’, Taga deman-ded an inquiry and said, “The state government has lost its vision but busy in siphoning off development fund”. Taga also ques-tioned as to why the ses-sion was reduced to three days instead of six days as notified earlier.
He blamed the state government of taking the assembly casually in contra-vention of the parliamentary democracy spirit. Respon-ding to the accusation of the opposition, Tuki informed the assembly that the Vote-on-Account was presented instead of a regular budget for want of clear-cut direc-tives from the Centre.
Stating that a full-fledged budget cannot be presented without fund from the Centre, the Chief Minister said the Planning Commis-sion never called for any meeting to finalise the annual plan for the state.
“The state assembly on July last year passed the Rs 4,915 crore budget for 2014-15 anticipating fund but received Rs 415 crore less,” he pointed out and added that since the union budget had not been passed in the Parliament, under such circumstances, the state government cannot prepare a regular budget.
Tuki also cited example of Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and Tripura where Vote-on-Accounts were presented barring Assam, where a full-fledged budget was tabled since the neigh-bouring state has its own sources of revenue. To the opposition criticism for reducing the budget ses-sion to three days, the Chief Minister clarified that it was reduced by the Business Advisory Committee in which BJP MLAs are also members.
“The BJP members should have supported and assured the House to move the Centre for fund as SPA funds have been allocated equally to all constituencies without discrimination,” Tuki quipped. Responding to criticism from BJP member Tumke Bagra that the Special Investigation Cell (SIC) of the state police is harassing people who raise ‘genuine issues’, the Chief Minister said that he (Bagra) was harassed because of a previous case of fund mis-use during his tenure as chief engineer and secretary. “An officer can seek legal redressal in case of any harassment by the SIC,” he added. (PTI)
