Budget 2016: Badal terms Budget 'pro-farmer', 'balanced'

Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today hailed the Union Budget 2016-17 as "pro-farmer, growth oriented, balanced and realistic" and thanked Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for allocating Rs 100 crore for the 350th birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Gobind Singh.

Calling it an "unprecedented" decision, Badal said the allocation for observing the tenth Sikh Guru's birthday celebrations was a matter of great pride and a "supreme gift" for Sikhs across the globe.

He welcomed the government's allocation of nearly Rs 36,000 crore for the farm sector and the raising of agri-credit target to Rs 9 lakh crore for the next fiscal, saying the measures would go a long way in ensuring well-being of the agricultural community.

He said it was a matter of great satisfaction and pride that the NDA government almost doubled the budgetary provisions for Agriculture sector in fiscal 2016-17 over the current financial year.

Badal also expressed happiness over the decision to encourage farmers to take up allied farming activities to supplement their income.

He hailed the decision of creating a dedicated long-term irrigation fund in NABARD with an initial corpus of Rs 20,000 crore to build irrigation facilities and initiation of a programme for sustainable management of ground water resources at an estimated cost of Rs 6,000 crore.

The Chief Minister also welcomed a health insurance scheme which protects one-third of India's population against hospitalisation expenditure and decision to provide BPL families with a cooking gas connection, supported by a government subsidy.