Ajit Pawar takes on opposition over budgetary allocations

Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar today castigated the opposition for calling his maiden budget as "biased".

Replying to the general debate on the state budget in the Legislative Assembly, Pawar, who is also the finance minister, defended the specific allocations for development works saying that if not done, the surplus shown in this year's budget would have been more than Rs58 crore.

He rejected the opposition charge that he was biased in allocation.

Pawar said this year specific allocations were made for social justice department - Rs408 crore, tribal development -Rs498 crore, and planning department- Rs 2547 crore.

According to him, it is an established fact that usually 40% of provisions are made for developmental ministries like power and public works department (PWD).

"The provisions are not made based on political affiliations," Pawar said, lashing out at the opposition for alleging that the budget was beneficial only to NCP ministries. Pawar himself is from NCP.

Coming down heavily on the opposition for disrupting the presentation of budget, Pawar said it was a deliberate attempt to stall the budget.

"Posters and banners are not prepared in five to ten minutes. They contained cartoons of former finance ministers. The opposition members did not even think that by doing this, they were insulting the present speaker, who was once finance minister," he said.