SHILLONG, Feb 2: Leader of Opposition, Mukul Sangma has said that the Union Budget presented by the Finance minister on Monday “is not Northeast specific” contrary to claims of the ruling dispensation laying special focus on the region.
Making his observations clear before media persons here on Tuesday, Sangma said, “The focus required to be Northeast specific is missing from the Budget.”
He maintained that the Northeast has been up against certain inherent challenges, and therefore, should have been handled differently in terms of investment and development, which would have enabled the region to keep pace with the rest of the country.
Stressing on the need for a new initiative, the CLP leader said that the Union Government needed to understand the strength and potential of the region.
The statement of the Opposition leader assumes significance as the Union Budget gave an extra push to poll-bound Assam in terms of infrastructure, but reduced the allocation from Rs 3,027 crore in 2020 to Rs 2,658 crore this year for the nodal DoNER ministry.
According to Sangma, “the government, with its ambitious spending proposal without looking at the resources, will end up lending more and increasing debt burden and it is visible from the fact that fiscal deficit in terms of GDP is close to 10 percent.” The former chief minister also cautioned against the exercise of disinvestment and its ramifications even as he maintained that there should have been a special allocation to deal with the problems revolving around the Brahmaputra River.
“Act and Policy is missing from their Act East Policy,” he said, adding that the DoNER ministry has been gradually reduced to redundancy.
As it is, the reduction in the budget estimate at a time when the government claims to put special emphasis on the Northeast, has raised many questions as well.
