6,000 crore was announced by Siddaramaiah for PWD works and rural roads

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah addressing the Legislative Assembly in Belagavi on Thursday. | Photo credit:

Stating that the guarantee schemes have not affected development works in the state, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday announced a grant of ₹ 6,000 crore for Public Works Department (PWD) works and rural roads.

He announced the grant while responding to the debate on lack of budget for development work, which was attended by BJP members Sunil Kumar, Suresh Gowda, MT Krishnappa, among others.

He announced ₹ 4,000 crore for PWD works and ₹ 2,000 crore for rural roads under account Annexure E. “This amount will be allocated to all MLAs irrespective of their political party. The work will start in the current financial year and the amount will be shown in the supplementary estimate, he said.

BJP government blamed

Responding to claims that the government lacked funds for development work due to the guarantee scheme, the chief minister said that he was facing shortages due to the pending bills of the previous BJP government and poor budget allocation by the Center to the states. . The Basavaraj Bommai-led BJP government had approved works worth over Rs 2.09 lakh crore without budgetary allocation. He left the bill of Rs 29,060 crore unclear. ‘We had to bear the burden of paying the outstanding bills. So far we have cleared Rs 18,018 crore worth of pending bills,” he said.

Besides, he said the state has not received Rs 11,495 crore from the Centre. The 14th Finance Commission had assured special grants of Rs 5,300 crore for the Upper Bhadra project, Rs 3,000 crore for tank development and Rs 5,439 crore. “Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced a special subsidy for the Upper Bhadra project in the budget. However, the state has not received a single penny for the project,” he said.

Spend on guarantees

The state government had spent over Rs 88,867 crore in the last two years to implement five guarantee schemes. He said, ‘We have fulfilled our promise to the people.