West Bengal presents farmer-friendly budget keeping an eye on Panchayat elections

West Bengal finance minister Dr Amit Mitra presented the state budget on Thursday at the Assembly and keeping in mind the Panchayat elections later this year, he announced a number of tax reliefs for rural Bengal.

In the budget, stamp duty of properties in urban and rural areas have been lowered by 1%. “The stamp duty on all properties valued between Rs 40 lakh and Rs 1 crore will come down from 6% to 5% in rural areas and 7% to 6% in the urban areas,” he said.

To help the tea industry, the state had proposed to waive income tax of tea gardens for the financial years 2018-19 and 2019-20. Education Cess and Rural Employment Cess have also been waived for tea gardens for 2018-19.

Hitting out at the Centre, Dr Mitra said that demonetisation had hit rural economy adversely and thus to help them mutation fee for agricultural land sold for agricultural purposes, has been exempted fully.

An amount of Rs 100 crore has been allotted to create a corpus fund in order to help farmers in times of contingencies when prices crash so that they do not have to sell their produce.

Monthly pension of farmers has been raised from Rs 750 …read more