Bhubaneswar: Leader of Opposition (LoP) Naveen Patnaik was not impressed by the Odisha Budget for 2025-26, which was presented in the Assembly by chief minister Mohan Charan Majhi on Monday.
The chief minister allocated funds for 16 new initiatives, but Naveen said just announcing large sums of money is not enough.
“A very large sum of money from the last budget has still not been spent. Industrial growth is going down, so are the finances. It seems the double engine government is going in reverse gear,” Naveen said while speaking to newspersons.
“The prices of essential commodities are affecting everyone, suicide of farmers continues, women are not getting work in Mission Shakti and unemployment is spiralling,” the former chief minister added.
“To announce large sums of money in the budget is not important. What has to be done is the expenditure of those sums for the development of our state. I repeat again that this is a budget which must be spent. We will watch and see what is to be done,” he concluded.
Majhi presented a budget of Rs 2,90,000 crore, which Odisha deputy CM Kanak Vardhan Singh Deo described as a ‘people-friendly, people-oriented budget’.
“It won’t be appropriate for me to comment on his (Naveen’s) statement. He won’t find anything this government is doing as right. He did nothing for 24 years… CM (Majhi) has focused on every sector. The way the CM presented the budget inside the state Assembly, no other CM has in this Assembly ever presented the budget for more than 2.5 hours,” said Singh Deo.
