Finance Minister Harpal Cheema in Sangrur, Thursday. (Express) Punjab’s new finance minister, Harpal Singh Cheema, on Thursday undertook his maiden visit to Sangrur district, during which he stated that the AAP government will come up with a budget within the next three months and no new tax will be introduced.
Cheema, while interacting with mediapersons at Sangrur, said, “Our budget to run various affairs of the government is Rs 37000 crores for the next three months. Later we will come up with a first of its kind budget for the masses. We will not impose any new taxes. In fact, we need to plug loopholes in tax collection and evasion by the sand mafia, liquor mafia and electricity mafia. Once all loopholes are plugged, the treasury will be full and the public’s funds will be spent on welfare of the masses only. We will fulfill each and every poll promise. ”
He added, “Earlier the excise, finance, and income tax departments were under one minister. Hence, no coordination was happening. After more than two decades perhaps, these three departments will be managed by one minister so as to better coordinate on issues of tax collection and also to check tax evasion. The results will be visible to one and all soon.”
Cheema stated that they will be plugging loopholes in various development projects as Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal had done in his state, giving the example of a flyover with an estimated cost of Rs 350 crores (as per the previous Congress government ) was later completed by Delhi’s AAP government in just Rs 200 crores. “Similarly we will find such anomalies here as well. This is the reason that development works of panchayats have been stopped temporarily.
We will reallocate money for these works after proper planning as a lot of such works had been allotted by the previous government in a hurried manner. We are not against development. Our aim is to spend money in a judicious manner.,” he added.
Talking about AAP workers visiting various government offices, he said, “In the first couple of days some workers had visited some departments. But later, our supremo Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab CM Bhagwant Singh Mann had made it clear that we first need to find shortcomings in every department and we are not supposed to use any foul language with anyone. Strict action will be taken against anyone found flouting rules.”
Regarding regularisation of employees working under national health mission, Cheema said,” Around 60% of the salary of these employees comes from the Central government. Hence, we need to take up the matter with the Centre before regularising them.”
Cheema also claimed that the AAP government was committed to the smooth procurement of wheat, which is going to start from April 1 in Punjab.
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