Bengaluru, March 16 : Taking on the Congress leader and former chief minister Siddaramaiah, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Wednesday said liabilities during Congress rule rose to 107 percent sans Covid-19 pandemic, but the BJP government did well to ensure fiscal deficit at 3.3 percent of the GSDP instead of an estimated 5 per cent. “The Leader of the Opposition in the House (Siddaramaiah) and others spoke a lot about the borrowings of our government. During the Congress rule, liabilities rose to 107 per cent even when the state was not facing the pandemic. Despite the pandemic, the BJP government ensured a fiscal deficit at 3.3 percent of the GSDP, although it would have reached 5 per cent. Isn’t this fiscal discipline?” Bommai said in reply to the budget debate in the assembly. “The BJP government brought down the revenue deficit to Rs 6,000 crore from an estimated Rs 15,000 crore. Isn’t that fiscal discipline?” he further asked. Blaming the Congress government for the present fiscal situation, Bommai said that it was the BJP government that is repaying the loans raised by the previous government. “We are repaying the loans raised by the Congress government. If you would have performed better we would not have raised loans,” he said. “Raising loans is a constant phenomena. What loans you had raised, we are repaying, and what we have raised the next government shall repay, It is a continuous process. Therefore, to blame everything on one particular government is unacceptable,” CM added. Karnataka faced a shortfall of Rs 21,000 crore in 2020-21, and on top of it, we spent Rs 15,645 crore to manage Covid, Bommai said. On former minister Krishna Byre Gowda’s attack on the central government for not giving Rs 57,000 crore share of taxes to Karnataka from the 2022 on budget size of Rs 39.45 lakh crore, Bommai accused him of misleading the House by saying that its fundamentally wrong way of looking at economics. Besides devolution, he said the central government gives funds to the state for national highways, food grains, ports, and railways among others. Gowda had submitted that the state’s share in taxes in 2017-18 was Rs 31,752 crore, which was 1.47 per cent of the on Budget size of Rs 21 lakh crore, but in 2022, the state should have got Rs 57,000 crore share in taxes from the on Budget size of Rs 39.45 lakh crore. Quoting figures, the CM said that Karnataka received more grants-in-aid from the Centre under the NDA when compared with the UPA. Bommai said his 2022-23 Budget is “growth-oriented, pro-people and realistic” while the Congress staged a walkout. BDN GNK
