UP Assembly session: Budget anti-farmer, anti-people; govt misleading public, says Opposition MLAs

The Yogi Adityanath government had on Thursday presented the Budget for the financial year 2022-23. Samajwadi Party (SP) chief and Leader of Opposition Akhilesh Yadav will be speaking on the Budget on Monday. The lone BSP MLA Uma Shankar Singh, too, said that he would express his thoughts about the document on Monday.

Suheldev Bahujan Samaj Party (SBSP) chief and former state minister Om Prakash Rajbhar said, “There was an allocation of Rs 200 crore under “Pichda Varg Shaadi Anudan” for the marriage of daughters in the previous Budget, but the allocation in this year’s Budget is zero per cent.” The SBSP had contested the 2022 Assembly elections in alliance with the SP.

Rajbhar, who is a popular leader among OBCs voters of the state, added, “The OBC community should think. You form 52 per cent of the state’s population but there is zero balance (in the state coffers) for your daughters’ marriages.” He added that a caste census should be conducted but no budgetary provision has been made for the exercise.

Dubbing the Budget as “anti-farmer, anti-employment and anti-women”, Samajwadi Party MLA from Katehari Laliji Verma said the BJP government had been presenting huge Budgets in the past fiscal years too but their utilisation on the ground had been between 45 to 72 per cent only across departments.

Congress MLA from Rampur Khas Aradhana Misra said that the Budget was an attempt to “mislead people”. “Facing the problems of inflation and unemployment, people had expected a the Budget to make life more convenient for them.

Instead, it has only brought disappointment for every section of the society,” Mishra said. The government had made 130 announcements in its “sankalp patra” in the run up to the Assembly elections but it made provision for only 97 of them in the Budget. “This shows that the government makes announcements to retain power but it is not serious eniugh to fulfill its promises,” she said.

She also said that the Yogi Adityanath-led government had been silent in the Budget about its promise to provide free two-wheelers to college-going girls.

The Congress leader said that in the wake of the rising prices, the government should consider to increase the amount allocated under “vidhayak nidhi” (MLA’s Local Area Development Fund) to Rs 5 crore.

Meanwhile, Allahabad West MLA and former Uttar Pradesh minister Sidharth Nath Singh said, “The past government (Sp) was Lucknow-centric with the development of one 8-km Metro and one stadium. The current government’s Budget has a provision for developing Metro rail projects and stadiums in various districts.”