Former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has said the budget presented by the BJP government on Monday is full of empty rhetoric and acrobatics of figures.

He said the government has cut the budget of all the departments providing essential services including agriculture, irrigation, education, health, energy, transport, public health, cooperation and home.

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Not only this, he said in a statement, this budget is silent on all the issues like BJP’s election promises, 2 lakh jobs, giving MSP to farmers, controlling inflation.

Hooda said the BJP had promised to give farmers a rate higher than MSP on crops like paddy and wheat before the elections. “BJP had promised a rate of Rs 3,100 on paddy crop. Neither did the BJP keep this promise after forming the government nor did it make any such provision in this year’s budget,” he said.

“How BJP juggles with figures can be understood from its estimated and revised budget figures. The government deliberately exaggerates the estimated budget and later the revised budget is reduced. The actual budget is reduced even further. For example, last time the BJP had presented an estimated budget of Rs 189,876 crores, which was later revised to Rs 180,313 crores, lower by almost Rs 10,000 crore,” he noted.

Hooda said it is clear from the budget proposals that the government is going to drown the people, who are already burdened with a debt of Rs 4.5 lakh crores, in more debt.

“BJP has increased the loan on the state so much that the government has to spend 30.26 percent of the budget only in paying the loan instalments,” he said.

He said the government would have to spend Rs 26,231 crore just to pay the interest on the loan taken by the government this year.

“In the last budget, Rs 25,142 crores were proposed for this. That is, this time an additional interest of Rs 111 crore will have to be paid. Apart from this, this time a proposal of Rs 35,788 crore has been made as instalment of public loan. This figure is also Rs 1744 crore more than last year’s Rs 34044 crore,” he said.

“It is surprising that the government that is neck deep in debt has proposed to borrow 34.87 per cent of the amount for the budget this time too. The state had a debt of about 60,000 crores from 1966 to 2014, which is now 4.5 lakh crores and it is going to increase even more in 2025,” the former chief minister said.