Mukhi tore apart the Congress budget saying: ``The budget was supposed to be presented on March 23, but it was presented on March 27 and since the following two days were non-working days, we will pass it in two days. Is that little time enough for discussion?''

He said: ``The government has imposed additional taxes of Rs 110 crore on Delhiites. The hike in petrol and diesel prices will hike the prices of other commodities and will affect the poor.'' Mukhi said the government had proposed to collect Rs 2,700 crore from sales tax. But they had failed to collect even the Rs 2,475 crore, which was the target for 1998-99. Amid cries of `shame, shame' from the BJP members, Mukhi also criticised the government for reducing the plan size from Rs 2700 crore to Rs 2365.86 crore. He further accused the Congress of not presenting anything new in the budget.

``We had cleared the proposal for building 15 flyovers, multi-level parking, software park, world trade center, mini polytechnics and the 15 sewage treatment plants. These are not their proposals of projects, however, they will put their names on the foundation stones,'' he said amidst much table thumping from the members of his party.

Responding to the criticism, legislative secretary Ajay Maken termed the budget a tribute to Rajiv Gandhi, saying that the Congress's maiden budget carried forward his ideas of computerising the country so that it could enter the new millennium with pride. Booing Maken, BJP MLAs jested and said that the country would enter the new millennium without any help from the Congress in another eight months.

Maken said that while the BJP had floated the idea of a software park, their government had allocated space in Dwarka and a sum of Rs 10 crore in the first year itself. Rebutting Mukhi's allegations, Maken said that their budget laid emphasis on education, medical and public health and housing, which reflected their concern for the poor. Maken said that Rs 55 crore had been allocated to the MCD slum wing. A separate provision had been made for providing low cost housing and a Slum Improvement Board was being constituted, which would also benefit these people.

He further added that they had increased the budgetary allocation for public health from 7.34 per cent of the total budget to 9.11 per cent.