Ex-BJP chief minister's allegation 'forces' Gujarat govt to upload crucial budget papers

In a surprise move, hours after former BJP chief minister Suresh Mehta accused the Gujarat government for “deliberately refusing to place” four major budget documents while presenting the budget for 2023-24 in the state assembly on February 24, the state finance department swiftly acted to upload each of them on its website.
Mehta’s allegation went viral immediately on Gujarati television media as also social media, apparently forcing the state officials to act.
The documents which Mehta, talking with media in the forenoon, said had still not been released for uploading are: Mid Term Expenditure Framework, Development Programme, Outcome Budget and Gender Budget. The veteran leader, who was Gujarat chief minister in 1995-96, and resigned from the BJP in 2007 following differences with then CM Narendra Modi, claimed, the documents had not been uploaded “deliberately” to hide crucial figures from being known.
Sources said, last year, too, some of the documents were uploaded only after a senior Ahmedabad-based expert and budget analyst Mahendra Jethamlani brought to the notice of the state officials about the omission.
“We received a similar feedback this year, too, and asked officials concerned to upload the documents. It wasn’t our intention hide facts”, an state official said.
Also present at the media conference with Mehta, Hemant Shah, former professor of economics at the Gujarat University, and environmental expert Mahesh Pandya, claimed to Counterview, this “suggests we were able to make an impact, forcing the state government to upload the omitted documents on its finance department website.”
“These documents should have been placed on the very first day when the state government presented the budget in the Gujarat assembly, February 24, as was the case in the past”, Shah and Pandya underlined, adding, “That they did not upload the documents for a week till Suresh Mehta made serious allegations suggests their motive.”
Mehta told media that there is “nothing unusual” about hiding crucial documents having facts and figures about development work of the state government from public view. “The state government has been operating without any kind of transparently for the last several years”, he alleged.

Comments

Gujarat No 1 here too? Cops justify torture: 'Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis naturally prone to crimes'

A new report, "Status of Policing in India Report 2025: Police Torture and (Un)Accountability", states that Gujarat tops the list of 16 states and one Union Territory, with 63% of its police personnel "strongly endorsing" torture. Furthermore, 49% of Gujarat’s police personnel were found to have what the report calls a "high propensity" for torture, considering it "necessary and acceptable" for obtaining information across various crime categories—second only to Jharkhand (50%). In sharp contrast, Kerala has the lowest percentage of police personnel "justifying" torture (3%) and the lowest "high propensity" for violence (1%).

Will Trump govt use US religious freedom report to further pressure India into submission?

Already under pressure from the Trump administration, which has reportedly asked India—successfully, some would say—to remove high tariffs on American products, there is reason to wonder whether Washington might use the recommendations of the latest United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Annual Report to further act against the Government of India.

A traditional Marxian view? Like N-weapons, AI poses 'existential threat' to human civilization

The other day, I was talking with YS Gill , whom I have known as an incisive analyst since my youth, when he, like me, was associated with the Communist Party of India (CPI). A passionate science activist committed to creating awareness of scientific thinking, he told me about the dangers of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how it would lead to mass unemployment. Predicting that AI would replace human intervention in India’s call centers, he estimated that about 70 lakh people would be rendered jobless.

60 crore in Mahakumbh? It's all hype with an eye on UP polls, asserts keen BJP supporter in Amit Shah's constituency

As the Mahakumbh drew to a close, during my daily walk, I met a veteran BJP supporter—a neighbor with whom we would often share dinner in a group. An amicable person, the first thing he asked me, as he was about to take the lift to his flat, was, "How many people do you think must have participated in the holy dip?" He then stopped by to talk—which we did for a full half-hour, cutting into my walk time.

Patriot, Link: How Soviet imbroglio post-1968 influenced alternative media platforms

Adatata Narayanan, Aruna Asaf Ali Alternative media, as we know it today in the age of information and communication technology (ICT), didn't exist in the form it does today during or around the time I joined formal journalism at Link Newsweekly as a sub-editor in January 1979. However, Link, and its sister publication Patriot, a daily—both published from Delhi—were known to have provided what could be called an alternative media platform at a time when major Delhi-based dailies were controlled by media barons.

A conman, a demolition man: How 'prominent' scribes are defending Pritish Nandy

How to defend Pritish Nandy? That’s the big question some of his so-called fans seem to ponder, especially amidst sharp criticism of his alleged insensitivity during his journalistic career. One such incident involved the theft and publication of the birth certificate of Masaba Gupta, daughter of actor Neena Gupta, in the Illustrated Weekly of India, which Nandy was editing at the time. He reportedly did this to uncover the identity of Masaba’s father.

Top Hindu builder ties up with Muslim investor for a huge minority housing society in Ahmedabad

There is a flutter in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur area, derogatorily referred to as the "border" because, on its eastern side, there is a sprawling minority area called Juhapura, where around five lakh Muslims live. The segregation is so stark that virtually no Muslim lives in Vejalpur, populated by around four lakh Hindus, and no Hindu lives in Juhapura.

Martyrs’ Day at Sanand: Remembering Vinod Kinariwala amidst politics of remembrance

I was urged by a close relative, considered across my family as a binding force, to attend a grand ceremony on Martyrs' Day, March 23, along with four other relatives. The event, called Veeranjali (homage to martyrs), was to be held in an open space near Sanand town, about 15 kilometers from Ahmedabad. Martyrs' Day has been observed across India since independence, as it was on this day in 1931 that Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru were executed.

New York-based digital company traces Modi's meteoric rise to global Hindutva ecosystem

A recent document, released by the Polis Project Inc.—a New York-based digital magazine and hybrid research and journalism organization—even as seeking to highlight the alleged rise of authoritarianism in India, has sought to trace Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meteoric rise since 2014 to the ever-expanding global Hindutva ecosystem over the last several decades.

Search This Blog