Hooda sops to put over Rs 3,000-cr burden on state exchequer
The 31 announcements made by chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda at Gohana rally on November 10 would put an annual additional burden of over Rs 3,000 crore on the state exchequer.
The 31 announcements made by chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda at Gohana rally on November 10 would put an annual additional burden of over Rs 3,000 crore on the state exchequer.
Even though the finance department has yet to start exercise to plan revenue generation for the same, it seemed to have already launched estimation process and sent last month 'most urgent' letters to all the department heads concerned telling them to take 'measures to curtail wasteful expenditure'.
Officials of the finance department told HT that state government had the resources and the announcements would see implementation from January 1, 2014. "We are confident of improving upon our tax collection for 2014-15 financial year, even as the government has enough resources to implement them in the first three months of the new year," a senior official said.
Meanwhile, the government has also scheduled a meeting for November 21, to bring further clarity on the provisions to implement new announcements.
Prominent among sops announced by the CM included 50,000 houses for ex-servicemen, Rs 2,000 hike in salary of over 3 lakh exployees, Rs 5,000 risk allowance for over 55,000 cops, Rs 1,000 pension for over 20 lakh beneficiaries of different categories, Rs 2,500 hike in payment to anganwadi workers, helpers, sweepers etc whose number was over 80,000.
A conservative estimate reveals that there would be an expenditure of over Rs 2,500 crore on the houses for ex-servicemen, over Rs 600 crore for 3 lakh employees' salary hike and over Rs 700 crore additional expenditure on the risk allowance, pension hike and the allowance hike. These were besides the Rs 3,000 hike in the minimum wagers and hike in the compensations for the industrial workers.
However, when contacted, principal secretary, finance, Rajan Gupta said his department had started its exercise to collect required information from different departments and exact expenditure on the implementation of the said announcements. "It would be done soon and exact expenditure would be known only after that,"he said.