'Budget size to go up to Rs 3.35 lakh crore,' says Siddaramaiah

The size of the state budget this year, to be presented on July 7, will be about Rs 3.35 lakh crore, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said on Monday.

Addressing 70 first-time MLAs cutting across party lines at a training programme here, Siddaramaiah said the budget size will be at least Rs 25,000 crore more than the previous budget presented by former chief minister Basavaraj Bommai, earlier this year.

In the beginning of the 2023-24 fiscal, the Bommai-led government presented a budget of Rs 3.09 lakh crore. The budget size will be increased to make way for implementation of the five guarantees to be rolled out by the Congress government, Siddaramaiah said.

Giving a comparison, Siddaramaiah recalled that the state’s first budget presented by the then CM Kengal Hanumanthaiah in 1952 was Rs 21,030 crore.

Siddaramaiah urged the legislators to understand the structure of the budget, read it in detail and contribute to discussion on it in the Legislative Assembly. He too was a novice when he started out, he told the MLAs.

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“When H D Deve Gowda asked me to take up the finance portfolio, I was hesitant as I did not know much about finance. But I read up about it and discussed with economists before presenting my first budget,” he said.

On the occasion, he also asked the MLAs to go through the Indian Constitution in detail and understand the various parts of the document. “If you do not know the Constitution, there is no way you will be a good Parliamentarian,” he said. If not for the Constitution, BJP leaders such as K S Eshwarappa and C T Ravi, along with Siddaramaiah himself, would never have become ministers but would have been rearing sheep, he quipped.

He encouraged the legislators to attend the House regularly. He himself has rarely missed a session, unless it was an emergency, he said and hailed former MLA Vatal Nagaraj. “He never missed a session. He would be the first one in the House and the last one to leave,” he said.

Siddaramaiah also interacted with and took questions from the new MLAs.