india

Updated: Mar 07, 2020 07:44 IST

With assembly elections due next year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in Assam on Friday announced a slew of benefits including free rice, electricity and monetary benefits for the poor families in the state.

In his fifth consecutive budget speech, finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma gave details of the various schemes the government would continue or start this financial year.

Assam goes to polls in April next year.

“As part of our ANNA Yojana to ensure nutritional guarantee for all, we will provide free rice to all beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act. It will benefit 57 lakh families and cost the exchequer Rs 498 crore annually,” Sarma told the assembly.

The move is an expansion of last year’s Affordable Nutrition and Nourishment Assistance (ANNA) for tea garden workers, which had benefitted 400,000 families.

The government announced free electricity to all households with monthly consumption of less than 30 units, which the government feels is adequate to cover the basic electricity needs of a family. It will benefit 14 lakh families and cost Rs 650 crore.

Sarma said a sum of Rs 830 per month would be transferred to bank accounts of nearly 27 lakh poor families. It would include Rs 400 for medicines, Rs 200 for pulses, Rs 150 for fruits and Rs 80 to buy sugar.

“The scheme will start from April this year. For this year, we will deposit an amount of Rs 10,000 in one go around Durga Puja. From April 2021, beneficiaries will get the sum every month. It would later include other benefits as well,” the minister said.

The government has increased the total sum given to brides from families with an annual income of less than Rs 500,000 in lieu of one ‘tola’ (around 10 grams) of gold from the existing Rs 30,000 to Rs 40,000. It will cost the exchequer Rs 150 crore annually.

The earlier Swami Vivekananda Youth Empowerment Yojana has been redesigned to provide nearly 200,000 youths with a grant of Rs 50,000 each to encourage them to take up economically productive activities. An amount of Rs 1000 crore has been earmarked for it.

Sarma announced a slew of measures for tea garden workers including Rs 3000 to 721,000 workers, wage compensation of Rs 18,000 for six months to pregnant women, gratuity of Rs 50,000 to tea garden workers, 4000 smartphones to tea garden ‘sardars’ (chiefs), Rs 25,000 each to 20,000 youths to start businesses etc.

Financial assistance to widows, senior citizens, unmarried women over 40 years, fee waiver, free textbooks and uniforms for students of government schools, free bus service in Guwahati to women and senior citizens etc. are other schemes announced in the budget.

Sarma announced the creation of two new autonomous councils for Koch-Rajbongshi and Moran-Muttock communities. He said that from now on knowledge of Assamese or any of the languages spoken by the state’s indigenous communities would be mandatory to secure government jobs.

“Anyone from the state who gets medals in Olympics or Asian Games would directly get jobs in the state civil or police services. They could become magistrates or police officers directly. The first beneficiary would be international athlete Hima Das who will be made a deputy superintendent in Assam Police,” said the minister.

Announcing a tax-free budget for the fifth consecutive time, Sarma said Assam witnessed 31% growth in Good and Services Tax (GST) collection in comparison to the national figure of 6%. He announced that the government would reduce 50 paise tax per litre of petrol and diesel as well.

Debabrata Saikia, Congress legislator and the Leader of Opposition in Assam assembly, said the government’s announcements won’t help it in the polls.

“This is totally an election-centric budget and voters won’t get wooed by it. When they came to power in 2016, the government promised to teach people to fish instead of giving them the fish, but in reality, it has done exactly the opposite,” Saikia said.

“It is just giving money to all sections with the aim of coming to power again.”