Poll-bound States get benevolence

New Delhi: West Bengal and Bihar will get special financial assistance to give a push to the two states, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Saturday during his first full Budget speech in Lok Sabha.

While Bihar is expected to elect its next government in November this year, West Bengal is likely to go to polls early next year. While Bihar will get its second All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences or AIIMS, Jaitley said the state as well as the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal will also get special assistance on the lines of Andhra Pradesh.

In Bihar, the Amit Shah-led BJP has huge plans to take on the coalition of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United and Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal. After the BJP's poor show in Delhi recently, its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) last month said it will decide its strategy there.

West Bengal has already seen a belligerent BJP taking on the ruling Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, who has been on a sticky ground after the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam implicated a number of her top party leaders.

Among other highlights of the Budget, Jaitley announced a plan for high growth, saying the pace of cutting the fiscal deficit would slow as he seeks to boost investment and ensure that ordinary people benefit. Delivering his first full-year budget since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's landslide election victory last May, Jaitley said growth would accelerate to between 8 and 8.5 percent in the fiscal year starting in April. A pace of 7.4 percent is expected for the current year.

"India is about to take off," Jaitley, 62, said early in his speech to lawmakers. "The world is predicting that this is India's chance to fly." He forecast inflation at 5 percent by the end of the fiscal year ending March 2016, undershooting the Reserve Bank of India's 6 percent target and creating room to cut interest rates. Annual inflation was 5.1 percent in January.

Jaitley said he would stand by the fiscal deficit target for the 2014/15 fiscal year, which ends March 31, of 4.1 percent of gross domestic product. But he pushed back by a year, to 2017/18, a deadline for cutting the deficit to 3 percent of GDP. In 2015/16, the deficit will be 3.9 percent of GDP, above the 3.6 percent target inherited from the last government.

Jaitley, who underwent surgery last year to treat his diabetes, sat down around 20 minutes into his speech and continued to deliver his address from the government's front bench.