GUWAHATI: Assam Finance Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday presented state’s first e-budget with a deficit of Rs 2149.04 crore for the financial year 2018-19 without any new tax proposal.
All the legislators in the Assembly have been provided with a touch-screen tablet each with details of the budget as Assam became the third state after Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh in the country to present the state budget in the digital format.
Presenting the Rs 2,149 crore deficit budget with an annual outlay of Rs 90,673 crore, Sarma told the House “In the 2018-19 budget, there are three stands: ‘ekatrikaran’ — consolidation of policies we have announced and work undertaken in the last two years; ‘xomproxaron’ — expansion and scaling up ambition of our existing programmes; and ‘uttoron’ — raising standards of our pursuance.”
The budget has allotted Rs 11,570 crore to education sector, Rs 5,082 crore to health sector while the agriculture sector has been provided with Rs 1,801 crore.
Under a Rs 30 crore scheme as mentioned in the budget, the BJP-led government promised an annual sanitary napkin allowance of Rs 600 per head to girls aged 12–20 years hailing from families earning less than Rs 5 lakh annually. The money will get transferred to their bank accounts. Nearly 5 lakh girls would be covered by this scheme. The benefit would end once they reach 20 years of age.
The government introduced a pension allowance for unmarried women whose both parents have died.
The state will also promote one lakh self-sustainable self-help groups for women through loan and capital subsidy.
Sarma announced a slew of new projects and services, including setting up of 10 new law colleges and allotment of Rs 5 crore each to two model villages in each of the 126 assembly constituencies in the state.
The budget proposes to set up a Women Helpline with a telephone code 181 to augment security of women in the state. Thirty-five cybercrime police stations, one each in every district headquarter, will be set up. The cyberdome in Guwahati will act as the apex cybercrime coordination centre for cyber security, cyber forensic, digital data analysis, social media monitoring and collaborate with proposed district-level cyber police stations.
The budget also proposes to set up social cell in every department to bring the government closer to the people and has allocated a sum of Rs 3 crore for this purpose.