DH team brings you live updates of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s budget speech.
Fiscal Affairs:
CM seems to have spared the common man of additional tax burdens. Thanks to the election year.
Additional excise duty on beer hiked from 122% to 135%.
License fee for distilleries and breweries hiked by 50%.
Rs 500 to be levied on luxury cabs per seat, per quarter.
Stamp duty exempted for alternative sites by BDA.
Key announcements:
Government to set up three 250-bed super speciality hospitals in Mysore, Gulbarga and Belgaum. These would serve critically ill patients.
Government to set up one medical college in each district in phased manner. Six colleges to come up initially – one each in Tumkur, Haveri, Bagalkot, Yadgir, Chikkaballapur and Chitradurga.
Kaveri Tourism Authority to be set up to develop Mysore circle (Mysore, Mandya, Chamaraja Nagar and Kodagu districts)
All villages to get telemetric rain gauge system.
Expert committee to prepare text books.
Online computer-aided education to be introduced.
10, 000 students in standards 9 and 10 to be trained in IT, retail and healthcare.
Education Quality Monitoring Cell to be set up.
Central university to be set up in Karwar.
Bangalore and Karnataka Virtual University to be set up.
Bangalore
Development and widening of roads – Rs 300 crore
Development of footpaths – Rs 100 crore
Development and protection of 31 lakes – Rs 100 crore
Implementation of parking policy – Rs 10 crore
Development of peripheral ring road – Rs 5800 crore
Solid waste management – Rs 100 crore
Development of arterial and sub-arterial roads – Rs 500 crore
Elevated road to be constructed from Chalukya to Hebbal junction.
Elevated road to be constructed from Alisada to Basaveshwara Circle.
BDA to construct 8000 flats.
Applications for 5000 sites in Kempegowda layout to be invited in March.
Allocations for different sectors
Water resources – Rs 11, 349 crore
Education – Rs 21, 305 crore
Energy – Rs 11, 693 crore
Urban Development – Rs 9995 crore
Social welfare – Rs 6475 crore
Women and child welfare – Rs 3670 crore
PWD – Rs 6634 crore
Rural Development – Rs 9361 crore
BBMP – Rs 1527 crore
12:50 pm. Agricultural growth was at 4.9%, higher than the national avaerage of 4.6%
12:45 pm. State GDP was around 5% in 2013-14.
12:43 pm. BBMP gets total grant of Rs 1527 crore.
12:40 pm. We have provided clean government. We have also met many promises in a short duration.
12:36 pm. Speaker asks CM to start the speech. Siddaramaiah begins presenting his 9th budget.
12:33 pm. CM walks into the Assembly looking relaxed and takes his seat. All set to go.
12.28 pm: Till December 2013, the government had met only about 68 per cent of its tax-revenue target, thanks to the slowdown in the economy. The target was Rs 62,464 crore, while the actual realisation as Rs 42,947 crore. The coming Lok Sabha elections would prevent him from taking harsh measures to boost revenue.
12.20 pm: The budget will see him walking a tight rope. The government expenditure is ballooning at a time the revenue is shrinking. Some of the burden is due to the welfare schemes he announced in a hurry when he took charge.
12.15 pm: Though Siddu will present the budget for the full year (2014-15), he will seek legislative sanction to bankroll government expenditure only for the initial four months.
