Union Budget 2017: O Panneerselvam lauds Arun Jailtey's balancing act

Chennai: Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam welcomed the Union budget for its emphasis on agriculture, but added that it did not highlight the acute drought situation in the southern part of the country, besides feeling that a special package for drought-hit farmers could have been better.

“I commend the Union finance minister on the difficult balancing task that he has done and his focus on the broad themes of structural reforms and initiatives that have been put together in a very coherent statement. The emphasis has been eliminating waste — both in terms of use of resources and in terms of precious policy time, by being focused on the coherent set of targeted initiatives. In that sense, this budget represents a significant forward movement from previous budgets,”

He said the finance minister had done away with the artificial and irrelevant distinction between plan and non-plan schemes in the budget as advocated by former Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa and the focus could now be on the functions that have to be performed.

He welcomed the Mission Antyodaya directed at lifting 1 crore families out of poverty, enhancement of allocations for the MGNREGA, Gram Sadak Yojana and the National Rural Livelihood Mission.

He expressed concerns about the implications of proposals relating to the National Testing Agency to conduct nationwide entrance examinations and urged the Centre to ensure that national level testing is not imposed or forced in states like Tamil Nadu which already have a transparent, fair and robust system of admission based on a school leaving examination which is conducted with unimpeached integrity. He wanted the Union government to take up the structural reforms of medical education sector only after adequate consultation with the state governments and all stake holders.

He also commended the Railway Safety Fund with a substantial allocation of Rs 1 lakh crore for elimination of all unmanned level crossings in broad-gauge by 2020.

The abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board would ensure faster clearances of foreign investment projects and benefit states like Tamil Nadu which is a favoured destination for foreign investment, he added.