Delhi Budget for 2007-2008 passed in State Assembly

New Delhi, Apr 19 (UNI) Delhi Finance Minister A K Walia today announced that each member of the Legislative Assembly would henceforth have the power to recommend names of 200 widows for disbursement of pensions, as part of the State Government's social welfare measures for the neglected sections of society.

Replying to a discussion on the Delhi Budget for 2007-2008 in Legislative Assembly, Dr Walia said the introduction of the measure was to ensure that pensionary benefits were available to as many widows as possible.

The Delhi Budget for the year 2007-2008 includes a provision to grant pension of Rs 600 per month for widows below the poverty line.

In his reply, Dr Walia said the provision for widow pension would benefit 70,000 women in the Below Poverty Line category.

He said in the Budget, the state Government had tried to provide relief to as many people from the poor and underprivileged sections as possible.

The Budget includes a slew of sops for women, students and the elderly, besides exempting common man items like kerosene stoves, lanterns from VAT, while reducing tax on cutlery items.

While it provides for increasing monthly pension under the old age pension scheme from Rs 400 to Rs 600, it creates a Directorate of Women and Child Development to focus exclusively on all schemes for welfare of women and children.

Further, a number of schemes for the benefit of students have been included in the budget like introducing a scheme to promote higher education among girls by depositing fixed amount of Rs 5,000 in bank accounts of girl students of class 12 in Government schools, exempting girl students from payment of fees for all courses in ITIs and scholarship schemes for students in higher and technical education courses.

Responding to the BJP's criticism of the Budget, Dr Walia said there had been a 73 per cent increase in plan outlay in this year's budget.

On BJP's claim that the non plan outlay was more than that for plan spending, Dr Walia said the non plan outlay also included over Rs 1000 crore earmarked for small savings.

''If one reduces this amount from the non plan outlay, it comes to far less than the plan outlay,'' he said.

He said the provision in the budget for 53 Underground reservoirs would help to ensure an equitable distribution of water in Delhi.

On the BJP's allegation of water shortage in Delhi, he said unfortunately the Government had to depend on other states for supply of raw water to the Sonia Vihar Water treatment plant.

Refuting allegation by Leader of the opposition, Jagdish Mukhi, that the earlier regime was able to utilise the approved plan outlay upto optimum level, whereas the present Government had not been able to utilise the plan funds, Dr Walia said as against the BJP spending just 84 per cent of the plan outlay during its five year rule, the Congress had achieved a spending of 97 per cent of the plan outlay last year.

Dr Walia said the proposal by Dr Mukhi about inclusion of more items under VAT was under consideration.

Later, the Assembly passed the Budget with a voice vote.

UNI