AGARTALA, June 20 (TIWN): Whereas BJP has claimed, 7th Commission to be allocated soon and funds for 7th Pay Commission have been kept in the budget, Congress President Birjit Sinha said, “A primary look into the budget says 7th Pay Commission will be not so 'honey' as BJP is claiming. All Indian states' employees under BJP Govt has not been felicitated with 7th Pay Commission. So, I have huge doubt whether BJP can implement 7th Pay Commission for its employees or not”. Talking to TIWN over phone Birjit Sinha said, Congress will give a full-reaction on the budget on tomorrow via a press conference but said, “It was quite shocking that taxes on fuel price and cooking gas has been hiked majorly. People in Tripura are poor and with more taxes it will damage the economy further as fuel-hike means all items' prices hike. It’s almost like cutting people’s head”, the Congress added.

On the other side,CPI-M Ex-Finance Minister said, “It’s BJP’s trick to hike the commodity prices by increasing fuel prices. Hike in fuel price means hike of all commodities and this is the way BJP is going to generate revenue”.

However, amid opposition CPI-M and Congress’s claim about BJP Govt’s budget is useless and far from Vision Document, BJP supporters held a saffron led mass gathered rally at Agartala, terming the budget as historical. A massive rally was conducted at Agartala city led by above 500 BJP supporters congratulating the BJP Govt.  The rally organizers have thanked the BJP led Central and State Govt both for making a deficit free budget for the first time for Tripura.

Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Deb has marked the budget as ‘historical’ with Zero-deficit.

“This is like a dream comes true. I thank to Deputy CM Jishnu Debbarma and PM Modi, Arun Jaitley for making the budget a successful and making 7th pay commission fulfilled”, he added.

Noteworthy,  Tripura Deputy Chief Minister Jishnu Dev Varma on Tuesday presented a Rs 16,387.21 crore tax-free budget for financial year 2018-19.

Tabling the budget on the first day of the assembly session, Dev Varma, who holds the Finance portfolio, said that there is no deficit in the budget. He, however, proposed increase of sales tax on petrol by two per cent and on diesel and piped natural gas by one per cent each. "With the increase of sales tax and imposition of cess, the state government is expecting to earn Rs 40.84 crore per year. The earning from the proposed new cess would be utilised for road development in the state," he said.

Both CPI-M and Congress have slammed the budget. Congress leader Gopal Roy said, “BJP just has mimicked CPI-M’s 15 years old traditional budget”.