Raipur | The Chhattisgarh Legislative Assembly on Tuesday passed third supplementary budget of over Rs. 10,000 crores for the financial year 2018-19 mainly to cover farm loan waiver and fulfilling other poll promises.
Answering the discussions on demand proposals for the third supplementary budget, Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel said Chhattisgarh has become the first state in the country to purchase paddy from farmers at Rs 2500 per quintal.
“As per our poll promise, we waived off farm loans of farmers within 10 days of the formation of the government, he said.
The state government will be able to spend an amount of Rs 7,307 crore earmarked for the fulfilment of two major poll promises comprising Rs 4,223 crore for loan waiver and another Rs 3,084 crore earmarked for increasing Minimum Support Price for paddy procured during the on-going Kharif marketing season, he said.
Coming down heavily on the BJP, Baghel said “I am surprised that only 20 days have passed since our government has come to power and you are questioning us. We have just cleaned dust that spread on the files left behind by the previous government. Since we have come to power, several scams and irregularities which had taken place during the previous tenure are coming to fore.”
The previous state government here had started selling liquor through its own outlets and was now asking a 20-day-old government when it would fulfil the promise of liquor ban, he questioned.
The BJP later staged a walk out demanding complete farm loan waiver after which the supplementary budget amounting to Rs10,395.58 crore was passed by voice vote.
With the passage of the third supplementary budget proposals, the size of annual state budget for the financial year 2018-19 went up to Rs 1,05,170 crore.
Later, when the BJP legislators were returning to the House after staging the walk out, some Congress MLAs allegedly laughed at them, following which BJP MLAs Brijmohan Agrawal and Ajay Chandrakar demanded an unconditional apology.
Subsequently, BJP MLAs, including Leader of Opposition Dharamlal Kaushik and former Chief Minister Dr Raman Singh, trooped into the Well of the House and were automatically suspended as per the Assembly rules.
Announcing the suspension, Speaker Charandas Mahant named 12 BJP members and adjourned the House for some minutes.
When the House resumed, Mahant revoked the suspension and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ravindra Chaubey tendered an apology.
Agrawal, however, broke into tears in the House saying that he had never experienced such an insult by ruling party MLAs in 29 years as a legislator.
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