UP govt refutes Rahul’s claim of slashing education budget

:The state government on Sunday clarified that budgetary allocation for education has been increased by 25%. The government issued the clarification while rejecting Rahul Gandhi’s suggestion that Uttar Pradesh should close down hospitals to save money after the government was accused of cutting the education budget.

The Congress vice president had yesterday mocked at the Uttar Pradesh government in a tweet, saying “great move CM Yogi - next you can save some more money by closing all the hospitals.”

In response, an official spokesman said: “The total budget for primary, secondary and higher education in the UP budget for 2017-18 is Rs 62,185.25 crore as compared to the previous budget of 2016-17 of Rs 49,607.93 crore, which is 25.4% higher.”

He said the budget for primary education is Rs 50,142 crore this time compared to Rs 38,066.06 crore last time. This is 31.7% more.

Similarly, the budget for secondary education is 4.8% higher than the previous fiscal. This year Rs 9,387.44 crore has been earmarked for the department, compared to Rs 8,956.86 crore last time.

For higher education, he said, the allocation this time is 2.7% more than the last financial year.

For 2017-18, Rs 2,655.81 crore has been earmarked against Rs 2,585.01 crore in the last fiscal.

The Yogi Adityanath government presented its first annual budget in the state assembly on July 11.