Highlights from Union Budget 2017: Cheer for agriculture, boo for political parties

Here we bring you the highlights from Union Budget 2017...

New Delhi, Feb 1: The much-anticipated Union Budget 2017 was presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday. OneIndia brings the key points from the budget for its readers:

Here are the sector specific points

Rail Budget: More on travel experience, less on safety

--Service charge on tickets booked through IRCTC to be withdrawn

--Rail safety fund with a corpus of Rs 100,000 crore created

--Dedicated trains for pilgrimage, tourism

--500 rail stations to turn differently abled-friendly

--25 train stations expected during 2017-18

---New metro rail policy to be announced.

--Bio-toilets for all train coaches

--No more unmanned railway crossing by 2020

India after demonetisation

--After note ban, GDP to turn bigger, cleaner and real

-- Effects of demonetisation to end before next year

-- Pace of remonetisation has picked up

Income Tax: No respite for crorepatis

-- 15% surcharge on incomes above Rs 1 crore to continue

-- Surcharge of 10% for those whose annual income is Rs 50 lakh to 1 crore

--Reduction of existing taxation rates for those whose income is between 2.5 lakh to 5 lakh from 10% to 5%

Monetary curbs on political parties

-- Political parties to receive donations only by cheques or online

-- Maximum cash donation any party can receive will be Rs 2000 from one source

Modernisation of agriculture

--Rs 75 lakh package for cleaning, packaging of farm produce

--Model law on contract farming to be formulated

--Nabard to create 63,000 agricultural credit societies

--Farm credit fixed at Rs 10 lakh crore

--Crop insurance to spread over 40% area cropped

--Dairy processing infrastructure fund under Nabard

--Computerisation of Nabard to help poor farmers

--Focus on farmers from Northeast and Kashmir.

--Mini labs in Krishi Vigyan Kendras

OneIndia News