Delhi Budget focuses on women, slums, Yamuna, transport, health

New Delhi, March 25 (IANS) Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta on Tuesday presented a Rs 1 lakh crore Budget 2025-26 focusing on infrastructure, Rs 2,500 women monthly financial assistance scheme, transport, Yamuna cleaning, new classrooms and laptops for students and schemes for slum redevelopment and social welfare.

The Budget Estimates in 2025-26 of Rs 1 lakh crore are 31.5 per cent more than the Budget Estimates 2024-25 of Rs 76,000 crore and 44 per cent higher than the Revised Estimates 2024-25 of Rs 69,500 crore.

About 72 per cent of the proposed budget 2025-26 has been allocated for revenue expenditure and 28 per cent for capital expenditure.

While presenting the Budget, Chief Minister Gupta identified ten focus areas of the government including infrastructure development; health and education for all; expanding social security and development; access to water, sanitation, and Yamuna cleaning; industrial development and investment promotion; seamless connectivity; power, sustainable development, green growth and pollution control; smart and good governance; efficient irrigation and flood control and tourism, art, language and culture promotion.

For women's monthly financial assistance – one of the key poll promises of the BJP - the Chief Minister set aside Rs 5,100 crore to pay Rs 2,500 per month to poor beneficiaries.

In the health sector, Rs 2,144 crore were allocated for Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) health insurance in addition to Rs 1666.66 crore proposed to the PM-ABHIM scheme under which critical care blocks and diagnostics will be strengthened.

For slums, Rs 696 crore was allocated for development through the urban shelter improvement board, and Rs 100 crore was allocated for setting up Atal Canteens to provide nutritious and subsidised food at 100 locations. Another Rs 20 crore was proposed to provide benefits under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban) for offering affordable housing.

“Providing clean water and sanitation to every citizen of Delhi is the primary responsibility of the government through the visionary plan for the water and sanitation sector with a historic amount of Rs 9,000 crore,” said the Chief Minister.

For cleaning the Yamuna, she announced plans to build 40 Decentralised Sewage Treatment Plants at a cost of Rs 500 crore so that sewage water is treated at the source itself.

She said that Rs 40 crore will be spent on the purchase of modern machinery like trash skimmer, weed harvester and dredge utility to clean the river.

On the health front, another Budget highlight was the allocation of Rs 320 crore for expansion of Health and Wellness Centres (HWC)/Ayushman Arogya Mandir (AAM) to ensure better primary healthcare facilities with the establishment of 400 HWC/AAM. These will be the new avatar of the previous government’s ‘Mohalla Clinic’ scheme.

The sanctioned strength of Home Guard Volunteers was raised to 25,000 from 10,285, a proposal that may boost the bus marshal scheme for women’s security.

She also set aside Rs 7.5 crore to provide free laptops to 1,200 top-performing students of Class 11 based on Class 10 board results.

While allocating Rs 12,952 crore to improve Delhi's public transport system, she shared plans to add more than 5,000 electric buses in FY 2025-26.

She also allocated Rs 2,929.66 crore for Delhi Metro for the work of the remaining three corridors of Phase-4 - Lajpat Nagar-Saket G Block, Inderlok-Indraprastha, Rithala-Bawana-Narela-Nathupur (Kundli) – planned to be started in 2025-26.

As many as Rs 10,047 crore were allocated for the Social Security sector, out of which Rs 9,780 crore were set aside for schemes and projects of the Social Welfare, Women and Child Development and SC/ST/OBC Welfare Department.

To deal with serious environmental challenges like air and water pollution and waste management, Rs 506 crore was allocated to the Environment and Forest departments, for monitoring of environmental parameters and time-bound implementation of projects.

In Chief Minister Rekha’s maiden budget, Rs 300 crore were allocated under “Pollution Control and Emergency measures” to effectively implement environmental reforms in Delhi.

A budget of Rs 1,157 crore was allocated to the Development Department to empower every village and farmer of Delhi. She allocated Rs 4.85 crore for farmers, under the ‘PM Kisan Samman Nidhi - State Top-up Scheme’ under which farmers will be provided Rs 3,000 annually (in three installments of Rs 1,000) in addition to the Rs 6,000 annual assistance under the ‘Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi’ scheme.

The Chief Minister also announced a ‘Vivaad se Vishwaas' scheme for middle-class traders and promised efforts to ensure benefits of the schemes reach the target beneficiaries, including a verification of beneficiaries of ration, pension and EWS schemes to weed out illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingyas.

Opening two medical colleges, fulfilling the plan to build State Guest House, building auditoriums and stadiums, redeveloping Anand Vihar ISBT and Sarai Kale Khan ISBT and opening a new ISBT in Dwarka were some of the other highlights.

The Chief Minister said a state-of-the-art Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) is proposed to provide a single emergency number for better crisis management and allocated Rs 30 crore for setting up Command Control Centres, EOC under DDMA.

She also proposed Rs 6,897 crore for local bodies in the FY 2025-26. Out of this, Rs 3,560 crore will be for education, healthcare and sanitation.

For the Delhi Fire Service, Rs 110 crore were allotted for deploying small-sized fire tenders. For courts, Rs 490 crore was set aside for 200 new courts and an additional Rs 200 crore for a hybrid system of courts.

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