Deputy chief minister and state finance ministerDevendra Fadnavis tabled the Shinde-led government’s first budget for the year 2023-24 in the Maharashtra assembly.
In his budget speech, Fadnavis said the outlay for farmers has been increased by Rs 6,900 crore and the coverage of the Mahatma Phule Jan Arogya scheme, a Health Insurance scheme of the government, has been raised from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 5 lakh.
Fadnavis started reading out the budgetary allocations in the Lower House of the State Legislature at 2pm.
He read out the budgetary provisions from an iPad instead of a conventional paper document.
This is for the first time that Fadnavis presented the state budget as he holds the finance portfolio.
During Fadnavis’s tenure as the chief minister between 2014-19, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sudhir Mungantiwar was the finance minister. The Shinde-led government, in which his faction of the Shiv Sena and the BJP share power, was formed in June 2022.