Bengaluru: Facing assembly polls in a year, Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah Wednesday proposed a slew of freebies and subsidies, including “Namma Canteens” a la Tamil Nadu’s “Amma canteens” and many other endearing steps in his budget.
Besides seeking to set up subsidised food canteens, the Karnataka 2017-18 budget proposed to provide up to seven kg of free food grains per poor person and give 100 percent preference to Kannadigas in certain private sector jobs.
Taking the cue from the popular “Amma canteens” of Tamil Nadu, introduced by late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, Siddaramaiah proposed to launch “Namma Canteens” in Bengaluru, where breakfast would be provided at Rs five and lunch and dinner at Rs 10.
This is the last “full term” budget presented by the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government before going to polls in early 2018, in which it is expected to face the BJP’s fierce bid to stage a comeback to power that it lost in 2013.
Siddaramaiah also holds the finance portfolio and it was his 12th budget as finance minister and the fifth as CM. He had earlier served as finance minister under the ministries headed by H D Deve Gowda and late J H Patel.
The 2017-18 budget presented in the assembly does not propose any major change in the tax rate structure, apparently due to the expected roll out of the GST from July 1 this year.
“Namma Canteen, a novel programme will be started to supply breakfast, lunch and dinner to the common man at affordable prices,” Siddaramaiah said.
He said one canteen of subsidised foods will be opened in each of the 198 wards of Greater Bengaluru limits and allotted Rs 100 crore for the scheme.
“On demand from the people, food grains being distributed under Annabhagya scheme will be increased from five kg to seven kg per person,” he said.
He said 20 lakh poor families have already been brought under ‘Annabhagya’ scheme through Public Distribution System which was announced by Siddaramaiah after assuming power with an intention to free the state from hunger.
To encourage higher education, the government proposed that free laptops will be supplied to students getting admission in 2017-18 to engineering, medical, polytechnic and first grade colleges.
Around 1.5 lakh students will be benefited from this.
In a move being considered as “linguistic appeasement,” the budget states that government will take steps to ensure 100 per cent preference in employment of Group C & D jobs to Kannadigas and five per cent for differently-abled in the private sector.
PTI