Our Correspondent
Kohima | March 26
Leader of the opposition in the Nagaland Legislative Assembly, TR Zeliang today objected to what he termed as “wrong and misleading figures” of projected budget deficits given in the Governor and the Chief Minister's Budget speeches on March 22 and 23 respectively.
Taking umbrage at the Governor's speech that “The budgetary deficit has skyrocketed by almost 75%, from Rs. 950 crore in 2014 to Rs. 1657.88 crore as on March 31, 2017” indicating as if the previous dispensation was responsible for the same, Zeliang argued that official records say otherwise.
“It is most unfortunate that the two speeches had made wrong projections as if my tenure in the previous DAN Government was responsible for a huge deficit with a jump of almost 75%. This is totally wrong and contrary to official records,” he said while taking part in the general discussion on budget here today.
He argued that when the first Democratic Alliance of Nagaland presented the budget in the year 2003-2004, in view of the generous grant of Rs 365 crore by the then NDA Government, it had a surplus budget of Rs 18.47 crore.
If a detailed analysis is taken, it will show that from a surplus budget of Rs 18.47 crore for the year 2003-04, the deficits had increased to Rs1234 crore as on March 2014, a yearly average deficit of Rs 112.18 crore, he added.
While projected deficits for the year 2013-14 were 950.09 crore, Zeliang maintained, the actual deficit was 1234 crore when the Vote on Account was presented on March 2014 for the year 2014-15. It was presented by the present leader of the house, he added, referring to Rio.
"After I took over from the present leader of this August house, I presented a deficit budget of Rs 1252.45 crore in the month of July 2014 since my government had inherited an accumulated deficit of Rs 1234 crore," the leader of the opposition maintained.
The paragraph 50 of this year budget speech clearly mentioned that an additional amount of Rs 178.24 crore was provided for the implementation of the ROP-2017, he said.
“Therefore, from the negative opening balance of Rs 1607.73 crore for the year 2018-19, if we subtract the accumulated deficits of Rs 1234 as on 31-03-2014 and the additional amount of Rs 178.24 crore for ROP 2017, the actual deficit of my government from 2014-15 till 2017-18, is only Rs 195.49 crore, with a yearly average deficits of Rs 48.97 crore,” he pointed out.
In this connection, he asserted that it was it is factually wrong to say that “our budgetary deficits which stood at 950.09 crore as on 31st March 2014 has skyrocketed to Rs 1657.88 crore as on 31st March 2017.”
Zeliang said that he is presenting the “correct figures and a detailed analysis in order to clarify the misleading and politically motivated statements about the deficit figures as given in the Governor’s speech as well as the budget speech.”
