Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu has presented his second budget in the Legislative Assembly. The Finance Minister, during his address, said that in deference to the first woman Chief Minister of the State, he has made some concessions to the women sections by way of regard to the leader. The fee in Government schools and colleges up to the 12th class for women students has been waived. This is an appreciable step and hundreds and thousands of girl students especially coming from poorer sections of society will be benefited by this decision. Additionally, the Finance Minister has proposed reservation of 10 per cent of industrial space in entrepreneurship for the women of the State. A significant social welfare measure announced in the budget is that separate toilets for females will be provided in all district and sub-district hospitals of the State. The Finance Minister said that separate mini buses for females will be provided and a seed money of five crore rupees would be allocated for this purpose covering two capital cities.
Besides the women-specific measures, the budget has taken very liberal view of industrial sector also. It proposes many sops to boost the industry. The Minister said that the fact of the matter is that the State did not have clear industrial policy for last ten years. It was the Coalition Government that had taken a bold step to chalk out an industrial policy for the State keeping its eyes fixed on the objective of providing employment opportunities to the youth especially the educated youth. Taking practical view of how to utilize the potential of the youth, the Finance Minister has proposed to set up two Entrepreneur Development Centres to be set up at Srinagar and Jammu to help, guide and train aspiring women entrepreneurs.
The Finance Minister has presented the power budget separately. There is nothing in the power budget to cheer the ordinary consumer. However, the Finance Minister has held the previous regime squarely responsible for handing over the power generating units of the State to the NHPC. He said that the Coalition Government had taken up the issue of return of some power projects to the State. It was not a very simple matter and that he had been engaging the Union Minister for Power in broad discussions on the subject. The nitty-gritty of the entire matter had to be resolved with patience and that would take time.
However, he did not promise any meaningful relief to the consumers from power cuts, low voltage, or even cuts for days at end. But of course he enumerated the reasons that have made impact on power supply. The people expected some definite and meaningful initiatives by the Government in regard to systematizing power supply within a given time frame. That, however, was not forthcoming.
Of course, the Finance Minister took up for consideration and revision an important subject of GPF of State employees. He fully dealt with its niceties and nuances and accused previous regimes of misleading the employees and not bringing any relief to them for expeditious withdrawal of their GP Fund. He claimed that some reforms had been administered in the GPF system after the present regime assumed the reins of the Government with the result that today any Government employee is able to withdraw his GPF money within a couple of days while previously he had to cool his heals for months together at the offices concerned. He promised more amendments in public interest to the GPF mechanism.
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel