Budget 2021 would benefit a few big companies, but will increase inflation: Arvind Kejriwal

"The total grants/loans/transfer from Government of India to Delhi has been reduced from Rs 1,116 crore to Rs 957 crore," Sisodia said after the budget was announced on Monday.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal Monday said that the budget would benefit a few big companies but it will increase inflation and people’s troubles. “This is a budget to benefit a few big companies. It will increase inflation and people’s troubles,” he tweeted.

While, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who is also Delhi’s education minister, said that the budget bypassed education and health sectors and that its main focus was to spend more by selling off government assets, without the common man benefiting.

“One thing that was obvious during the pandemic was the crumbling public healthcare system of the country. One would have expected the government to substantially increase healthcare allocation. Instead, the Union Budget has shockingly reduced the healthcare budget of India by 10 per cent – showing that not a single lesson has been learnt from the Corona pandemic,” Sisodia said.

“FM’s announcement of a 137% increase in the budget for ‘Healthcare and Wellbeing’ is misleading and an attempt to hide the reality that this government doesn’t care for the health of the people. It clubs non-health schemes, like the clean air programme, water supply programme to show an overall increase in health expenditure,” he added.

Sisodia also said that the city continued to get “step-motherly treatment” from the centre in the unions budget as it had seen no increase in grants in lieu of central taxes.

“Delhi received only Rs 325 crore; citizens of Delhi pay Rs 1.5 lakh crore as tax. Municipal Corporations have again been left high and dry with zero allocation against the demand of Rs.12,000 crore. BJP government had given Rs 2 lakh crore to all other municipal bodies across India but not to BJP ruled MCDs…the UT of Jammu & Kashmir, which is constitutionally on similar footing with the NCT of Delhi, has been provided a grant of Rs 30,757 crore as against Rs 957 crore to Delhi.”

The grant in lieu of share in Central Taxes provided in the Union Budget 2021-22 has been kept unchanged for two decades at Rs 325 crore, Sisodia added.

Over the past 6 years, the Delhi government has demanded before each budget that the share be increased. Last year, Sisodia wrote to the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman asking that Delhi’s share be increased in a fair manner.

“The total grants/loans/transfer from Government of India to Delhi has been reduced from Rs 1,116 crore to Rs 957 crore,” Sisodia said after the budget was announced on Monday.

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