EXCISE DUTY UP, BOOZE TO GET DEARER IN HRY
BUDGET SESSION BEGINS Says state aims at doubling the income of farmers by 2022
CHANDIGARH: Liquor is going to cost more in Haryana from April 1. The BJP government in the state on Monday announced a 57 % increase in the excise duty for country liquor. The increase on the Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) however will be in the range of 5% to 11% as per the ex-distillery price of the liquor brand.
CHANDIGARH: Promising women an environment free from ‘violence and discrimination’, Haryana governor Kaptan Singh Solanki on Monday said the state government will soon unroll an action plan on ‘sexual and gender-based violence’.
Addressing the 11th session of the 13th Haryana legislative assembly that marked the beginning of the eight-day-long Budget session, Solanki, in his an hour-long speech in Hindi touched a plethora of issues ranging from peasantry, rural development and agriculture to women, education and health.
FOCUS ON ‘IMPRESSIVE LANDMARKS’
Solanki’s 40-page address, with 138 points, focused on ‘impressive landmarks’ and achievements of ‘my government’ in different spheres. In a bid to send a message that the Manohar Lal Khattar-led BJP government was fulfilling its promises, Solanki said of 4,583 announcements made since October 2014, 2,996 have either been implemented or were in advance stages of implementation.
“My government is now giving final touches to a comprehensive action plan on sexual and gender-based violence,” the governor said as the legislators of the Opposition Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and the Congress party attended the session with rapt attention and desisted from creating disruptions. In the 90-member House, BJP has 47 MLAs, INLD has 19 and Congress has 17.
Solanki said the action plan will address all major components of crime afflicting women and children in the state. “It will delineate the responsibilities of various stakeholders on the steps to be taken by them in a time-bound manner,” he added.
The government, he said, was committed to empower women so that they may live with dignity and contribute as equal partners in the development process.
Stating that the state government was committed to provide a girls’ college at every 20 kilometres, Solanki said a government nursing college will too be set up in every district, besides a medical college.
He said the government has achieved notable success in the ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ programme and registered a quantum jump in sex ratio at birth to the highest-ever level of 914 in December 2017 as compared to 833 in 2011 and 871 in 2014.
“We have won national acclaim for our efforts to curb the evil practice of female foeticide and remove the blemish of