While criticising the Union Budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) spokesperson M Lakshmana on Wednesday raised questions over the future of various infrastructure projects in and around Mysuru including the new railway terminal proposed to be set up at Naganahalli and the expansion of the runway at the Mysuru airport.
Addressing a press conference here, Mr Lakshmana said no allocations have been made for the already announced airport runway project and the railway projects including the new Mysuru-Kushalnagar railway line project in the Union Budget.
He also sought to know the future of the Textile Park announced by the government more than five years ago, but had made little progress. Mr. Lakshmana regretted that there has been no announcement in the Budgetary proposals even to bail out the tourism sector, which had been badly hit by COVID-19. Mysuru is a tourist destination and the economy of the district depended on tourism to a large extent.
The KPCC spokesperson trained his guns on Mysuru MP Pratap Simha and sought to know from him how much allocation he had brought for Mysuru.
Mr. Lakshmana also accused the Union Budget of displaying an “anti-farmer” policy by reducing the allocation for the farm sector by more than ₹50,000 crore this year. He said the BJP Government had displayed its ‘revenge’ against the farmers, who had protested against the Centre’s farm bills for about a year.
The Union Budget that brought down the allocation for the agriculture sector was favourable to the corporates, he alleged.
Claiming that the income of 97 per cent of employees in the country had come down while crores of others had lost their jobs during the last two years, Mr. Lakshmana said the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) that comes under the Union Ministry’s Statistics and Programme Implementation too had admitted to a high rate of unemployment in the country during the last three years.
He also alleged that the country’s public sector was being privatised and claimed that the train passengers, who would be forced to cough up a huge fee for travelling in the private trains, will also have to pay for even using basic facilities like the toilets in the trains.
With regard to the Budgetary proposal to interlink rivers, Mr. Lakshmana said the proposal was more than 20 years old, first mooted during the tenure of former Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee, but had made no progress.
