With a record 32% hike, Rekha Gupta presents Rs 1L crore budget for Delhi

NEW DELHI: The newly formed BJP government gave the capital a talking point on Tuesday by presenting an ambitious Rs 1 lakh crore budget for 2025-26, a sharp increase of 31.6% over last year’s outlay of Rs 76,000 crore. Revving up the double engine that now runs the capital, it got valuable support from the Centre in the form of grants and loan, doubling the capital expenditure and allocating funds for various schemes and projects that were promised in the run-up to the assembly polls in Feb this year.
Like the

AAP

government, chief minister Rekha

Gupta

’s government, too, has given education the lion’s share with a Rs 19,291-crore allocation, nearly 19.3% of the total outlay (Rs 16,396 crore in 2024-25), followed by Rs 12,952 crore for transport, including roads and bridges (Rs 7,470 crore in 2024-25), and health with Rs 12,893 crore (Rs 8,685 crore in 2024-25).
Gupta, who also holds the finance portfolio, announced that her govt was setting aside Rs 5,100 crore for Mahila Samriddhi Yojana — a scheme to provide a monthly grant of Rs 2,500 to poor women aged above 18 — apart from allocating funds to roll out the Ayushman Bharat health scheme, increasing pension for senior citizens, widows and destitute, and constructing decentralised sewage treatment plants to prevent polluted water from flowing into the Yamuna.
Allocating Rs 9,000 crore for water and sanitation, the CM said her government’s prime responsibility was to provide clean water. She emphasised on bridging the gap between the demand of 1,290mgd and the installed capacity of 1,000mgd.

Gupta said her government was going to increase capital expenditure from Rs 15,089 crore in 2024-25 to Rs 28,115 crore for ‘Viksit Delhi’.

In 138-minute speech, Delhi CM flags 10 priority areas
The govt will take a loan of Rs 15,000 crore from the Centre under the National Small Savings Fund and also receive Rs 12,096 crore as grants and aid from it under various heads. The chief minister also projected an increase of nearly 17% in tax revenue, from Rs 58,750 crore in the 2024-25 budget estimates to Rs 68,700 crore in 2025-26.
In her 138-minute-long budget speech, probably the longest in the history of the Delhi assembly, Gupta constantly attacked and taunted the previous AAP government.
“The days of corruption, mismanagement and inefficiency are gone with the AAP(da) govt,” she added.
Before reaching

Vidhan Sabha

, the Delhi chief minister visited Hanuman temple at Connaught Place. At Vidhan Sabha, she chaired a meeting of the cabinet before entering the house.
In her speech, the CM said her government will focus on 10 key areas in the new financial year. These include infrastructure; industrial development and investment promotion; access to water, sanitation and Yamuna cleaning; health and education for all; tourism, art, language and culture promotion; expanding social security and development; seamless connectivity; efficient irrigation and flood control; power, sustainable development, green growth and pollution control; and smart and good governance. She said a major focus of the budget was the cleaning and rejuvenation of the Yamuna, inspired by the Sabarmati riverfront project. She said her government was allocating Rs 500 crore for Yamuna cleaning, ensuring that only treated water enters the river through the decentralisation of 40 sewage treatment plants (STPs). This was in addition to Rs 500 crore earmarked for the repair and upgradation of STPs and Rs 250 crore for replacing old sewer lines, besides investing in advanced machinery to tackle waste and pollution.
Gupta said her govt proposed to create a chief minister development fund with a provision of Rs 1,400 crore for developmental projects, complementing the efforts already made under other schemes and initiatives.
The CM announced that the Delhi government will set up 100 Atal canteens across the capital, earmarking Rs 100 crore to fund the project. An education hub in Narela, two new medical colleges, a modern cow shelter, a pilot project for eliminating overhead electric wires, free laptops for 1,200 students passing Class 10, welfare boards for gig workers and auto-taxi drivers, a new industrial policy and a global investment summit were among the key initiatives announced in the budget.
To curb alleged corruption in the free bus ride scheme for women, Gupta said the BJP govt will replace pink tickets with smart cards. In a bid to empower women and enhance their safety, Gupta announced a host of welfare schemes, including a monthly honorarium of Rs 2,500, installation of 50,000 CCTV cameras, introduction of pink PCR (all-female police assistance) units and a financial aid of Rs 21,000 for women who are expecting.
The CM, however, said her government will run a verification campaign to ensure that the benefits of the schemes reach only the deserving. “The AAP govt ran Delhi's schemes for vote-bank politics, which deprived the people of Delhi and benefited the ineligible. We will now launch a vigorous verification campaign so that illegal immigrants from outside Delhi borders, especially Bangladeshis and Rohingya, do not get benefits under any scheme,” Gupta said.
The chief minister said that her government will also establish an integrated command and control centre which will do real-time monitoring of various environmental parameters like air quality, water quality, noise levels and waste management, among others.
Gupta attacked the previous AAP governments for allegedly neglecting basic amenities in slum clusters of the city while building a ‘sheesh mahal’. Taking a jibe at the opposition AAP MLAs in the house, Gupta in a lighter vein said that ‘sheesh mahal’ will be included in the tourist circuit.
Taking a dig at AAP, Gupta quoted

Bashir Badr

: “Dil ki basti purani

Dilli hai

, jo bhi guzra hai usne loota hai (The locality of my heart is old Delhi, whoever has passed through it has looted it).”