Speaking on the budget in J&K assembly, BJP MLA Ravinder Raina hits out at Finance minister nd demanded immediate roll back of the hikes in VAT and the toll tax at Lakhanpur and said that this would badly affect the small traders and the common masses so it should immediately withdrawn. He said in all cases regional balance needs to be maintained and all the three region of the Stae Jammu, Kashmir & Ladakh should be given the equal shares. He stressed upon bringing more transparency and accountability in the system so that the schemes launched by the government may befit the common people otherwise the poor will more poor and the rich will go richer. He said Corruption is deeply rooted in the system and effective steps needs to be taken to uproot the Corruption otherwise government’s developmental vision will remain only in papers. Raina asked the Finance Minister to plan a comprehensive plan to develop the tourism in the State. He said there are many historical religious places in in Sunderbani and Nowshera such as Channi-Prat Mandir, Gandeh Pandev Mandir, Meenka Maha-Dev Mandir, Mangla Devi Fort, Mangla Mata, Shaheed Garh Gurdwara, Baba Birm Shaha Shrina & Veer Badrashware Mandir those have tremendous potential to attract the religious devotees those visit Mata Vaishno Devi and Shiv Khori but it requires proper infrastructure like road connectivity and the developmental of the spots and hoped that government will look into this sector with top propriety. Raina also highlighted the issue of daily wagers and asked the minister to frame a policy for them and release their salary at once so that they may get some relief.Taking a dig at Social welfare department Raina said there is no welfare in Social welfare as the announcements made by the Minister in last budget speech remained limited in papers. He said whether it is Old age pension, widow pension, Family benefit Scheme or other scholarship schemes, there is no progress is made in the department because of non availability of funds and said that the poor people are repeatedly roaming in the offices.
He also raised the issue of Salary of the ReT teachers and demanded that government should release the long pending salary of ReT teachers and also demanded that the SRO-43 cases are put in dust bins and asked the government to address all the pending cases of SRO-43 without any further delay. Raina asked the finance minister to fallow the “ Modi’s model of Governance” in J&K to make J&K a paradise in real sense. Raina said Finance Minister’s approach in tackling the sorry state in the Power Sector should be admired. He said the national average aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) loss levels was 27 per cent in 2013 but it shocked me to hear that it is 59% in the State, and said that this is because of power theft in its many forms and theft was the hallmark of the previous government. Raina said it is wise that one good thing that the State did during Governor’s rule was to join the Central Government’s ‘Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana’ or UDAY and the mess created by the previous government will be cleared. He further said that 65% of Jammu’s connections are metered as compared to 45% for Kashmir and it is important because if government want to reduce the power deficit by increasing tariffs then the burden will fall unfairly on metered consumers and regionally Jammu will bear more. He said “ I request the Finance Minister to ensure full metering across the state otherwise politically power reforms will become very difficult and this can be done if we have a innovative tariff policy where there is a stepwise increase in tariffs as consumers increase their power consumption, nominal rates for the first 200 units and then escalation beyond this. Raina further said that “we understand the Government’s decision to defer the 7th Pay Commission recommendations but I don’t think this is the way to go about it” he advised the Finance Minister to call a meeting of economists and stakeholders who can be asked to think of a way without compromising government finances and invite opinions from all on how to tackle this problem.
