NEW DELHI: A day after the Aam Aadmi Party government delivered its maiden budget, Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee chief Ajay Maken tore into the exercise with the slogan, "farzi degree, farzi sarkar and farzi budget". Maken labelled the budget "unrealistic" in terms of financial outlay and tax collection targets. The Delhi budget has a huge 41,129 crore outlay for the current fiscal year.

Maken also attacked deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia saying, "while presenting the budget on Thursday, AAP's finance minister harped on the assertion that this was a 'janata ka budget' but in reality he devoted hardly five minutes to AAP's core vote bank of Dalits, minorities and OBCs. These were the voters on whose strength AAP came to power". "The whole budget has been made based on unrealistic revenue forecasts and that is why we call it a bogus budget," Maken said. The budget will push up prices of essential commodities and stall development works, and the people will be impacted as taxes have been hiked on goods vehicles coming to Delhi from outside, said the DPCC president.

"Where would the money come for all the welfare measures promised in the budget?" Maken demanded to know from the Kejriwal government . " The revenue from stamp duty and registration fee accounted for just 4.16% in 2013-14 and 4.34% in 2014-2015. But going by the targets set out by the chief minister of Delhi, revenue from this account will go up to 37% in this financial year, which is an almost impossible target to achieve," Maken said. "Similarly, the VAT collection in 2012-13 was 14.93%, which came down to 13.43% in 2013-14 and slumped further down to 2.03% in 2014-15, but the AAP CM says that VAT revenue will jump to 31.2% in the coming financial year. Does the CM have a magic wand?" Maken said.

Maken said that the non-tax revenue generation was Rs 635 crore during the last financial year, but the finance minister claims that it would jump to Rs 1,127 crore in the coming financial year - an increase of 72.5%. He said there was negative growth in the economy in 2014-15, compared to 2013-14 (Rs 659 crore). He said the capital expenditure of the Delhi government in 2011-12 was Rs 8,437 crore; it was Rs 9,199 crore in 2012-13, Rs 11,685 crore in 2013-14 and Rs 7,476 crore in 2014-15. "It is obvious from these figures that the AAP budget was mere kite-flying," Maken said.

Describing the jump of 106% in education allocations this year as "misleading", Maken went on to point out that the budget has made a provision of Rs 30 crore for educational loans, which will facilitate giving up to Rs 10 lakh to a student, but it makes no mention of giving subsidy in the interest of the loans. "If such an announcement had been made, it would have benefited those who availed of loans earlier. The UPA government has already made a provision for student loans upto Rs 7.5 lakh without any collateral," Maken said.

