Opposition flays Karnataka budget, says it lacks vision

Bengaluru: The opposition BJP and the JD(S) on Friday flayed the budget presented by Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, saying it lacked vision and would burden the state with debts.

Former Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa said the budget lacks a comprehensive development vision of the state and would burden people with taxes.

“Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has said he will borrow Rs 86,000 crore. The burden of the debt will fall on the citizens of the state,” Yediyurappa said in a release.

Yediyurappa’s son and Shikaripura MLA B Y Vijayendra said it was shocking to see that none of the poll promises the ruling Congress had made ahead of the assembly elections would be fulfilled in the near future. According to him, these guarantees would take a year to be implemented completely.

“Today Siddaramaiah’s intent is pretty clear that they will take at least one year to fulfill their promises,” he said.

Vijayendra slammed Siddaramaiah for blaming the Centre and the previous BJP government in his budget speech.

“The entire time and energy of the Chief Minister has been spent only to blame the central government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the previous BJP government in Karnataka.” Regarding scrapping National Education Policy and bringing in new policy, he termed it ‘unfortunate’.

Former Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy called it a ”cut-and-paste budget.” “It is a cut-and-paste budget, which was reserved only to blame Prime Minister Narendra Modi and previous BJP government in Karnataka. It is limited to issuing a political statement,” Kumaraswamy said in a statement.

According to the JD(S) leader, the budget presented by Siddaramaiah was only an extension of the budget presented by his predecessor, former Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai.

“It will be better to call it a BJP criticism book than calling it a budget book,” Kumaraswamy said.