Cent percent voting before 10 AM in naxal area booth in MP
A polling booth in naxal affected Balaghat Lok Sabha constituency of Madhya Pradesh registered 100 per cent voting before 10 AM on Friday in the first phase of Lok Sabha polls.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is scheduled to hold her first round of pre-Budget consultations on 11 June with experts and allies bodes in the farm sector with a focus on mitigating likely adverse impact of delayed monsoon and drought on agriculture.
Sitharaman, the first woman finance minister in post-Independence India, will present the first Budget of the Modi-II government on 5 July. She is likely to come out with plans to boost allied farm activities such as fisheries, animal husbandry and poultry in consonance with the government’s goal of doubling farmers’ income.
Ahead of the Budget presentation, most farm bodies have already presented their memoranda of demands to the Finance Ministry for consideration and their incorporation in the draft budget.
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In Sitharaman’s first pre-Budget consultation with representatives from various agriculture organisations and agriculture economists, she is expected to elicit their views on ways to boost growth in farm sector and double income of farmers.
The Modi government has created a separate fisheries department and appointed a cabinet rank minister to promote the allied farm sector, which is believed to play an important role in increasing the income of farmers.
After her meeting with people from the agriculture sector, Sitharaman will also meet with representatives from industry bodies. The meeting will assume significance as it is expected to take note of the slowdown in economic growth and will seek their views on further increasing FDI inflows and boosting industrial productivity to give a fresh thrust to the economy, sources said.
Earlier, in its interim Budget presented in February just before the polls for 17th Lok Sabha, the Modi government had laid out a broad outline for the next five years. Sitharaman is unlikely to make any major changes in the budgetary allocation for various ministries and departments when she presents her maiden Budget in Lok Sabha on 5 July, sources said.
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