Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis will present the state budget on Thursday. The biggest challenge before Fadnavis, who will present his first budget as finance minister, will be to tackle the state’s biggest ever debt burden and resolve the row over the old pension scheme. Fourteen lakh employees of state and aided institutions will be on indefinite strike from March 14 if the Shinde-Fadnavis government fails to implement the old pension scheme. Nearly a decade ago, while addressing employees of the power sector in Nashik, Fadnavis had expressed concern over the state’s financial situation.
Fadnavis, who had then just taken over the reins of the state, had observed that the day was not far off when his government would have to secure loan from financial institutions for payment of salaries and wages. “I have inherited a debt burden of Rs 3. 35 lakh crore from the Congress NCP government. We will have to take stringent measures for impro ving the financial situation,” he had said.
With the local bodies polls in Maharashtra around the corner and the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections a year away the nearly nine-month-old Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis dispensation would have to do a big balancing act when it tables its first budget. The budget is expected to be people-oriented with the series of elections in 2023-24. In the run-up to the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha polls in 2024, the local body polls including those of big corporations like Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Nashik, Aurangabad, Nagpur and Amravati are expected to be held in 2023 - which would involve over 50% of state’s population and would be a sort of mini-Assembly polls.