Siddaramaiah had recently suggested that the government should continue with a supplementary budget instead of tabling a new one.
Rejecting former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s suggestion of a supplementary budget instead of a fresh budget, JD(S) supremo H D Deve Gowda said that a new budget was needed to send a new message to the people of Karnataka.
In an interview with news agency PTI, Deve Gowda said, “I do not want to criticise Siddaramaiah's suggestion. He has presented several budgets before, but the Chief Minister (H D Kumaraswamy) is not doing anything new. There is a parliamentary precedence. It is appropriate for a new government to present a budget than a supplementary.”
Citing that Congress had a history of presenting a new budget, Deve Gowda reminded reporters that the then Union finance minister P. Chidambaram had presented the budget on July 22, 1996, when the United Front government headed by Deve Gowda was formed. “I was heading the United Front government as prime minister and Chidambaram was the finance minister as the Congress had given outside support. The then coalition government had presented a full-fledged budget and it was called a 'dream budget'. Did the Congress's shine vanish by presenting a new budget?"
Deve Gowda went on to say that the United Front government had not discontinued any of the schemes launched by the Congress because of compulsions of a coalition government."Since the Congress had given outside support to my government, I had to accommodate their schemes in the budget. I did it due to coalition compulsions," he said.
According to Gowda, Kumaraswamy has repeatedly assured that he would not discontinue any of the schemes and programmes of the previous Congress government in the state as he did not want any trouble in the functioning of the coalition government.
Gowda went on to add that despite all this, Siddaramaiah had been pitching for a supplementary budget, instead of a new budget, as suggested by Kumaraswamy.
He said that both the Congress and JD(S) had planned of a lot of new schemes and a supplementary budget will not be able to accommodate all those schemes.
The budget session of the state Assembly is scheduled to commence on July 5.
Asked if he was satisfied with the coalition government, Deve Gowda said, "All these difficulties crop up in the initial stages and later subside. In the present circumstances, both the parties must realise that to run a smooth government, communal forces would have to be kept at bay."