Enewstime Desk
Agartala, January 31, 2020: Chief Minister assured that social allowances would be increased to Rs 2000 from existing Rs 1000 before 2023. He said, as promised in the Vision Document, social allowances are supposed to be hiked in installments due to financial burden left by previous government – as per Vision Document, in the first phase, the social allowances were raised to Rs 1000 earlier and it will be further hiked to Rs 2000 before 2023. He said this while speaking in the 2nd Annual General Meeting of Tripura Senior Citizen and Pensioners’ Sangha at Nazrul Kalakshetra on Friday.
The Chief Minister said the previous left front government never hiked the allowance by more than Rs. 100 at a single time. But fulfilling the promises made in the vision document, the new government increased the social allowance to Rs. 1000 in the first phase and the amount would also be hiked to Rs. 2000 before 2023.
Financial burden
“The state government is spending an additional amount of Rs. 467 crore for salaries and pensions per month following the implementation of 7th Pay Scale (Rs. 347 crore) and the hike in allowance (Rs.120 crore),” he said.
“The previous government left financial burden of Rs. 13,000 crore. But, the new government increased the Tax Revenue collection from 8.9 percent to 26 percent. Besides, the CD ratio has also increased from 39 to 56 percent,” he said while giving assurance of fulfilling the demands of government employees after receiving funds from the Fifteenth Finance Commission.
Meanwhile, the Chief Minister also pointed out that the BJP Karyakartas had staged protest in favour of the government employees during the Left rule but no government employee was part of the protest- it is one of rare incidents in state’s history.
Per Capita growth
In another note, Deb said the per capita income in Tripura has increased from Rs. 1.16 lakh to 1.51 lakh. He also highlighted that the state was registering industrial growth following the comprehensive and holistic initiative taken by the state government. He said that altogether 5,493 industrial units were set up in Tripura till 2017-18 and after formation of the new government, a total of 2649 new industrial units were set up in just one year (2018- 19), now the total number of industrial units stood at 8142.
The communists are now coming out of Lenin-Stalin theories and started observing the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi-it’s called ‘change’, said the Chief Minister in another note. “The communists couldn’t even imagine that they would observe the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. But, the change prevailing in the society has compelled the communists to do so,” Deb said.
