THE budget session of the Tripura Assembly was held on March 19-25, 2021. Time constraint was reflected on the very first day of the session.   The first day was allotted for the governor’s inaugural speech followed by the presentation of the budget 2021-22. After a long speech by the governor, the time left for the presentation of the budget was too short to present it by reading out fully. At this juncture, the speaker of the assembly came to the rescue of finance minister, Jishnu Debbarma and directed him to complete the presentation by reading the last part of the budget document. This is for the first time in the history of the Tripura Assembly that the budget was not read out fully.

The total expenditure proposed in the state budget is Rs 22,724 crore of which Rs 773.43 crore is revenue deficit. The budget has no proposal for the generation of jobs for the huge number of unemployed in the state. Rather, it put priority on outsourcing and privatisation. CPI(M) state secretariat in a statement called this fourth budget of the BJP-IPFT government as anti-people and having no direction to implement any of the 299 attractive promises made by the ruling party during the last assembly election. Now it is undisputedly proven that those cosmetic promises were only to fool the people to garner their support and they get hardly any relief during the ongoing crisis. On the contrary, the government has already burdened on them various types of taxes, VAT and cess on petroleum products, oil, natural gas, electricity tariff etc.

Manik Sarkar participating in the discussion said the total deficit including the supplementary expenditure of the year stand Rs 1717.15 crores which is alarming and very much distressing. If we look over the year’s activities of the government, such a huge deficit does not corroborate.  He pointed out that, the government promised 50,000 jobs per year. No vacancy was filled up. On the contrary, 10,323 teachers have been retrenched from the beginning of the last financial year. Implementation of 7th Pay Commission recommendations for the government employees was denied. Rather, they were denied their 17 per cent DA. By this time many employees have gone into superannuation or taken VRS reducing the budgetary burden to a large extent. Not a single new pension was given sanction. Instead, 50,000 old pensioners have been delisted. The sanction of the MLA Development Fund at the rate of Rs 50 lakhs per MLA was stopped for the entire year. The government has introduced a ‘new pension scheme’ for its employees. This scheme hardly put any burden on the government exchequer. Thus the government is very much accountable, for such a huge budgetary deficit and should mention the resources by which this wide gap could be bridged.

One of the interesting facts about the fiscal mismanagement of the government came to light that, while the outgoing Left Front government left Rs 13,000 crores as a loan during its long tenure of 25 years from 1993 to 2018, the BJP-IPFT government has borrowed additional loan Rs 7,235 crore within three years of its rule. In the 2021-22 fiscal budget, the government made a further proposal of a market loan to the extent of Rs 3094 crore. Assumably, the BJP-led government would surpass the loan amount left by the Left Front government in 25 years within its five-year rule. 

Apparently, Manik Sarkar continued, there is serious mismanagement in the fiscal management of the government. Thus, the government should bring out a ‘white paper’ with its present financial position, Manik Sarkar demanded.

The governor’s speech left out some of the important state issues. The government’s failure to retain the service of 10,323 committed in their ‘vision document’, handing over some government schools, some power divisions to the private hands, hoax commitment of the ruling parties to provide 200-man days per year in MNREGA work with a wage of Rs 340 per day, delisting of 50,000 pension holders and more acutely, the financial crisis of the daily wage earners, small traders, village poor all were just omitted in the governor’s speech.

Nailing the governor’s speech, the deputy leader of the opposition, Badal Chowdhury said, the governor mentioned that the state’s GDP growth rate is 13.9 per cent. It seems to be unfounded and unsubstantiated devoid of any assessment formula. Where the experts have anticipated negative growth of the country’s GDP, how Tripura, a backward state without any infrastructure can attain such an imaginary growth, he asked. He severely criticised the industrial and agricultural policies of the government which echoed to serve the interest of the corporate barons. Tapan Chakraborty, Chief Whip of the CPI(M) legislature party criticised the New Education Policy of the government in pursuance of which the state government is preparing to hand over a good number of schools to private hands. He also criticised the government’s inept management to deal with the Covid pandemic and stand by the toiling people while they were in an extreme crisis of food and work during the lockdown. Bijita Nath depicted the law and order situation of the state where lawbreakers got a free hand to rule over the innocent people, and torture on women, attacks their chastity are on the rise.   

On the last day of the session, Badal Chowdhury moved a calling attention notice citing a news item published on clandestine attempt of a minister, Meber Kumar Jamatia who tried to appropriate a plot of land recorded to be a forest land on his own name and on the last phase of the process the concerned district magistrate had negated and cancelled the process. The minister concerned vehemently denied his involvement in such process and informed the house that if this is proved, he would resign from the house. Immediately after the session, Badal Chowdhury met the press and presented all the documents where it was revealed that  right from the tehsildar to the sub-divisional magistrate concerned were illegally influenced to give nod to the process. Expectedly, the minister did not open his mouth after this revelation.