Ajit Pawar to present his 13th budget, a jt record

When Dy CM Ajit Pawar presents the budget on Monday, the biggest challenge before him will be to tackle the state's ever-increasing debt burden, which will cross Rs 7.82 lakh crore at the end of March 31. As per RBI data, it will be Rs 8.12 lakh crore against Tamil Nadu's Rs 9.55 lakh crore and UP's Rs 8.57 crore. Senior bureaucrats do not rule out a hike in excise duty on liquor to meet the additional expenses on the Ladki Bahin scheme. Also, the Shiv Sena Bhojan scheme to provide cheap food to the poor may be wound up. After S K Wankhede, Ajit Pawar will be the second finance minister to present the highest number of budgets. Wankhede had presented the budget 13 times, followed by Jayant Patil – 11 times and Sushilkumar Shinde – nine times. A high-ranking bureaucrat said that in the last 10 years, no steps have been taken by the state finance department to reduce the interest burden, expenditure on salary and pension. From Rs 62,123 crore in 2014, the salary of govt employees has increased to Rs 1.59 lakh crore, while pension amount has increased from Rs 17,385 crore to Rs 74,011 crore, and interest amount from Rs 23,965 crore to Rs 56,727 crore. He said a series of committees were set up to examine if the cost of expenditure can be reduced by taking stringent measures and whether the state needs many corporations. Concrete measures were suggested by the committees, particularly on reducing establishment costs and winding up boards and corporations, to no avail. "We expected that the CM and the two Dy CMs would begin pruning staff from their own offices. But the staff strength remains the same," he said. "The govt will have to find a huge amount to meet expenditures on the populist Ladki Bahin scheme, the annual cost of which has been estimated at Rs 46,000 crore, with 2.38 crore beneficiaries. We don't have resource mobilization plans. We have not given any thought to it… We may have to draw loans to tackle the unprecedented financial situation." — Prafulla Marpakwar