Centre open to making changes in Budget: BJP national spokesman

Ludhiana: National spokesperson for economic affairs of BJP Gopal Krishan Aggarwal while addressing a press conference on Saturday at the Circuit House here claimed that the central government was open to making changes or updating in Union budget for the new financial year. He said the party had assigned duties of leaders to conduct meetings with businessmen or organisations for taking suggestions in this regard. The national spokesman also conducted an interactive session with local businessmen from various organisations.
Addressing mediapersons, he said in this budget the Union government kept three things in mind, including agriculture sector, development and infrastructure and public welfare. He said though the economy was in distress, the government decided not to reduce government investments.
The national spokesperson claimed that the Union government was framing policy for implementing the tax payer charter soon that will help give the certain rights to good tax payers. He said the tax payers would be given priority in clearance of their taxes and bureaucrats will be held accountable for speedy service.
He further said the industry was fearful of China because despite a ban on Chinese goods traders are bringing Chinese goods through those 10 countries, where import duty is 0%, but now this thing was also under renewal. He said to control Chinese imports already import duty on many items has been increased. Aggarwal said the central government while keeping in view the welfare of states would soon release the pending instalment of GST and now a provision has been kept through compensation cess under which every month the GST would be transferred to the states.
The national spokesperson had come to tell the businessmen about the Budget but the businessman present at the site listed the problems they were facing. One of the businessmen, Upkar Ahuja, complained that the MSME schemes implemented by the Union government were not practical and some new schemes should be implemented. He demanded that the government should improve the existing schemes.
Another businessman D S Chawla said government schemes were not good for the industry as their association used to give employment to over 5 lakh labourers but when MGNREGA scheme was launched, labourers moved left industry and they had to face shortage of labour there. He said the industry should also be counted under MGNREGA as this would help in reducing labour crunch and would also help in giving employment to labourers.
Some of the industrialists rued that Rs 5,800 crore of industry money was stuck under TUFF scheme that was scrapped in March last year because some fraud took place in Gujarat. They demanded that proper ground work should be done instead of making schemes in AC rooms.
Senior BJP leader collapsed in meeting
During the ongoing interaction with businessmen at a hotel on Ferozepur Road the national spokesperson had started interacting with people when suddenly a senior BJP leader, Shakti Sharma, collapsed. He was taken to DMC hospital immediately and was undergoing treatment there.