Kejriwal Swallowed Bahujans’ Budget in 4 Out of 5 Years

The fate of Kejriwal in the election is largely in the hands of Bahujan voters. It has been a well-known fact the savarna castes voters are BJP and Congress supporters. Kejriwal has tried hard to gain the support of Dalit communities with its campaigning. However, the budget shows a very stark picture of the Kejriwal work towards the Bahujan communities.

First, Kejriwal formed his Government in Delhi in Dec 2013 with the support of the Congress party. However, realising that he won’t be able to act autocratically and always depend on Congress for any policy matters, he decided to abandon the Govt within 50 days. In re-election, Kejriwal formed the government single-handedly with a massive majority. Everyone knows what happened to Lokpal, so it can be clearly said that his rhetoric of Lokpal was a complete sham.

Now coming to the policies followed by Kejriwal during his term of last 5 years. His full term can be assumed from Feb 2014, hence his contribution to the budget can be counted from the 2014-15 full financial year. Kejriwal has been shouting with his voice that his government is a welfare government focusing on poor communities. But the budget during the last 5 year presents a very stark picture. The table below shows how the actual expenditure has decreased year on year for the Bahujan communities.

SC,ST, OBC Disbursement^[1]	2013-14 (act)	2014-15 (act)	2015-16 (act)	2016-17 (act)	2017-18 (act)	2018-19 (budg)	Total (act)
Revenue Account	2,319,473	2,381,219	2,518,293	1,025,624	2,367,802
Capital Account	466,085	385,390	346,282	257,531	483,566
Total	2,785,558	2,766,609	2,864,575	1,283,155	2,851,368
Percentage Terms
Revenue Account		2.66%	5.76%	-59.27%	130.86%	-16.70%	2.08%
Capital Account		-17.31%	-10.15%	-25.63%	87.77%	36.90%	3.75%
Total		-0.68%	3.54%	-55.21%	122.22%	-10.40%	2.36%

To expose all the lies stated by Kejriwal, only actual disbursement has been considered to evaluate his performance. Budgeted and revised estimates have always been overstated in the budget documents, hence only actual disbursement in rupee terms has been considered. Very clearly it shows that 3 out of 4 years the amount has decreased year on year in rupee terms and percentage terms. Only during 2017-18 it shows some jump due to a smaller base amount of 2016-17. The actual amount is available only till 2017-18 due to delay in reporting, hence only till 2017-18 in actual term the performance is considered. The budget document available for 2018-19 also shows an annual decline in allocation.

Cumulatively it is about a 2.4% increase in allocation over 5 years in nominal terms. If one adds inflation of about 5% it is a big negative value in economic real terms less than -20%. This is a huge betrayal to the Bahujan communities.

^[1] http://finance.delhigovt.nic.in/

Author – S. Kumar