Karnataka Budget ticks poll boxes with help from Gujarat manifesto

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By Our Special Correspondent

New Delhi, February 17: Taking a leaf out of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic poll playbook, Chief Minister Basavarj Bommai unveiled a please-all Budget in the Karnataka Assembly on Friday. Scaling the Rs 3 lakh crore Budget size, Bommai has given several talking points for the poll managers of the BJP in the Assembly elections, due in another three months.

A separate plan with adequate financial support for de-congesting Bengaluru; an all-out outreach to the farmers with a whopping Rs 80,000 crore financial bouquet; a comprehensive support system for the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward castes for education and self-employment; clear attempt to package a pro-woman Budget with several proposals; rural pitch for local employment generation and hand-holding of the self-help groups are some of the rightly ticked poll boxes by Bommai in the poll season.

The poll-bound Karnataka is in the pink of the fiscal health. The state revenue swelled by 20 per cent. Karnataka a few months ago had pipped Gujarat to take the second slot in the collections of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), behind only the industrial Maharashtra. This fiscal expansion helped Bommai to present Rs 3 lakh crore Budget, which includes Rs 77, 752 crores of public debt.

The Modi stamps on the Union Budget can be scanned from a lack of obvious freebies but a massive dose of welfarism with several outreach to women, SC, ST, OBC, youth, middle class and farmers. This was visible in the Bommai Budget, showing a clear sign that the Karnataka chief minister has aligned his economic worldview to Modi.

Only a few weeks ago Modi had spoken of aspirational blocks. Bommai provided for Rs 892 crore for aspirational Talukas for infrastructure development and improving quality of education in schools and colleges, besides another Rs.750 crore for hospitals and nutrition (Rs 140 crore) and Rs 500 crore for housing. He firmed up his poll resolve with free education for students of Government Pre-University College and Government Degree College, which will benefit eight lakh students.

Clearly showing that education and health are fast becoming electoral narrative as had been seen during the Gujarat Assembly elections, Bommai unveiled proposal to complete construction of total 9,556 classrooms, including 7,601 classrooms approved under ‘Viveka Yojana’. He also extended ‘Vidyanidhi Scheme’ to cover children of tailors, while it already covered kids of farmers, landless labourers, weavers and others. Bommai also provided for Rs 100 crore for providing better infrastructure and study materials under ‘PM SHRI Yojane’. There was an allocation of Rs 80 crore for construction of 5,581 toilets in schools.

On health front, again taking a leaf out of the BJP playbook from Gujarat, Bommai proposed in the Budget a slew of proposals which included the likes of ‘Arogya Pushti Yojane’ for eradication of anaemia (Rs 100 crore); Health Camps twice in 2023-24 for comprehensive health check-up in rural areas; free dialysis services up to one lakh cycles; upgradation of Community Health Centres of seven taluk headquarters into 100 bedded Taluk hospital; establishment of eight Critical Care Blocks of 50 beds and two Critical Care Blocks of 100 beds under PM-ABHIM scheme; free transportation facility for mother and neo-natal child delivered in taluk hospitals; establishment of 129 Taluk laboratories, District laboratories in all districts and State level referral laboratory in Bengaluru for providing laboratory services locally; establishment of Mother and Child Hospital in Savanur; establishment of AIIMS model hospital in Raichur and Super Speciality hospital in Kumta; commencement of IVF Clinic in four Medical Science Institutes in Bengaluru, Hubballi, Mysuru and Kalaburagi.

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