Siddaramaiah uses budget speech to attack BJP govt for ‘lack of fiscal discipline’

“The previous government had given approval to a huge number of projects in major departments with scant regard to the principles of fiscal discipline,” Siddaramaiah said, noting that the BJP government had approved projects worth around Rs 94,933 crore in the water resources, urban development, public works and other departments.

“Further in the year 2022-23 itself, the previous government approved Rs 49,116 crore’s worth of projects, although only Rs 33,616-crore budget provision was made to the above said departments and despite having balance cost of works of Rs 2,05,986 cr at the end of 2021-22,” he said.

At the end of the 2022-23 fiscal, Rs 2,55,102 crore works were pending and “it requires nearly six years to complete these projects”. “The huge balance cost of works left over by the previous government has posed a major challenge to our government in taking up new projects,” he said. The total liability of the state, which was at Rs 2.45 lakh crore at the end of the 2017-18 fiscal, has increased to Rs 5.16 lakh crore.

Along with the decrease in state’s share in devolved taxes, the “central government is gradually decreasing the grant-in-aid allocation for centrally sponsored schemes (CSS). Since the central share to CSS is decreasing, it has become inevitable for the state to increase” its share for the effective implementation of CSS. “This has resulted in a shortage of funds for implementation of new state schemes,” he said.

Citing the social security pension schemes as an example, Siddaramaiah said that in 2022-23, the central government released only Rs 447 crore, whereas the outgo from the state exchequer for the schemes was Rs 8,636 crore. “This means that the central government has paid only 4.9 per cent of grants to the social security pension schemes against the 95.1 per cent grants paid by the state government,” he added.

Siddaramaiah said the government planned to “rejuvenate the economy of the state through higher capital investments and direct cash transfer, and clear plans will be formulated for large-scale employment generation”.