CHANDIGARH, July 28: Haryana Vidhan Sabha today passed demands for grants of Rs 4167.06 crore for government departments for 1998-99 by voice vote. The cut motion proposed by Opposition members to reduce government demands for grants were rejected.The Finance Minister had proposed demands for grants of Rs 10785.22 crore for the current financial year. Of this, demands for grants of Rs 4519.63 crore had been passed through a vote-on-account in January. The Appropriation Bill for the demands for grants will be presented tomorrow.During the debate on demands for grants, Sampat Singh of Haryana Lok Dal expressed concern at the financial state of the government as its liabilities were going up. If the present trend continued, the financial state would lead to an alarming situation, he observed. The HLD leader termed the decision of the government to give a loan to the Haryana State Electricity Board (HSEB) as ``surprising''. The HSEB was in a bad shape and had failed to check theft of power and transmission losses, he said.Capt. Ajay Singh (Congress) referred to the problem of water-logging in Sirsa and sought immediate steps to divert excess water to Rewari, which was facing water shortage. ``The government could easily solve the problem of water-logging by doing so,'' he added.The Congress leader demanded that the slab system for power for tube-well should start from 50 feet as against 100 feet. Others who participated in the debate included Risal Singh (HLD), Rao Narendra Singh (Congress), Ram Pal Maina (HLD), Kishan Lal Pawar (HLD) and Devraj Diwan (Independent). Later, theAssembly passed the Punjab New Capital (Periphery) Control (Haryana Amendment) Bill, 1998 and the Haryana Cooperative Societies (Amendment) Bill, 1998.
