Chief Minister Harish Rawat has categorically said he is very disappointed over the Opposition dwelling over everything except disaster. It shows they are least concerned about the disaster. They are going verbose over Fl-2. It seems as if this merits paramount importance and the issues of disaster and the people’s suffering pales into insignificance as compared to Fl-2. He lauded the Budget in glowing terms while praising the finance minister Indira Hridayesh for taking immense pains to present such a splendid, all-embracing Budget.
He sounded apprehensive over the Union Government curtailing assistance due to the state. Subsequently, we will have to spend additional Rs 500 crore to meet our expense. To increase our revenue resources, we have constituted policy planning committee and the former chief secretary Indu Kumar Pande is the convenor of the committee. He said the increase in the non- plan expenditure would be take up as a challenge. We are concerned about how to increase our resources to meet the expense.
Ours is consumer state because we consume more than our produce but we get less tax and so we are giving emphasis on how to modernise our tax collection system. In this process, we have also asked the forest department to generate Rs 2500 crore through eco- tourism. Even we are going for e-tendering for mining because it is not being properly utilised for state’s interest.
As construction is consuming more time than fixed it is pinching our purses too. We will have to adopt new technology to check this to save time and money. As Narendranagar MlA Subodh Uniyal has suggested to do mining in chandrabhaga river otherwise Rishikesh would collapse in case disaster comes like June 2013. Now we are going to impose cess on few bus service and it will be used for public welfare works only. As far transport department is concerned then it is leaking wound so we will have to find out new mechanism to make it resource generation.
Commenting on leader of opposition Ajay Bhatt, CM Rawat said that MlA Madan Kaushik has all quality to become deputy leader of opposition then MlA Harbas Kapur said that Parliamentary Affairs Minister Indira Hridayesh also deserve to become deputy chief minister of the state. With this statement house witness another laughter. lambasting against MlA Sanjay Gupta, who quite often make sarcastic comment against the treasury bench, CM Rawat said that if you are unable to sit silent then don’t waste house time.