After receiving approval from the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) administration in Delhi is getting ready to unveil the Delhi Budget on Wednesday. The statement that the Budget will be delivered “without any change” was made by the Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
It appeared as though Chief Minister Kejriwal was irritated by the requirement that the budget for Delhi be submitted to the Center for approval. In addition to this, he stated that the Centre had delayed the ratification of the Delhi Budget in order to appease its pride.
The presentation of the Delhi Budget was supposed to take place on Tuesday, but it was pushed back because the MHA requested clarification on the distribution of money for infrastructure and advertisements. The opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), claimed that the Central government had delayed providing clarifications for three days and then accused the government for engaging in “cheap publicity.”
Kejriwal has stated that the government of Delhi is sick and tired of fighting and that it would prefer to work rather than battle. It is of no use to anyone. “We do not want any sort of conflict with the prime minister; we are interested in working together,” he said.
The Chief Minister stated that the Central Government had posed four questions. According to him, they provided responses to these inquiries without making any alterations to the Budget, which had already been approved by the Center. According to Kejriwal, this demonstrates that “their ego was satisfied.”
Kejriwal, in an attempt to poke fun at the objections raised by the Centre and the LG office, which stated that the budget for infrastructure was lower than the budget for advertisement, stated, “They said advertisement allocation was greater than that for infrastructure. From the very top to the very bottom, there have been uneducated individuals sitting. Which would cost more to build, 20,000 billion rupees worth of infrastructure, or 500 billion rupees worth of advertisements?
However, he also expressed satisfaction over the MHA’s acceptance of the Delhi Budget and said that it was “better late than never.”
He has been claiming that the Center has prevented a State’s Budget from being implemented. This is demonstrably not the case. Due to the fact that Delhi is a Union Territory and not a state, it is completely integrated into the functioning of the Indian government in every way. Furthermore, according to an insider in the LG office, the Budget has not been obstructed in any way.
