Delhi budget: Diesel vehicles to cost more, free healthcare for 27L kids

Over the last couple of years, the Delhi government’s budgets had focussed largely on beefing up the city’s physical infrastructure in time for the Commonwealth Games. With the Games over, the budget for 2011-12, the first presented by Sheila Dikshit, shifted focus to social infrastructure with welfare measures in health and education targetted at the school-going.

Welfare measures apart, the budget cited environmental concerns to hike taxes on diesel vehicles and health reasons for raising levies on several tobacco products (though not cigarettes) and on sweetmeats and namkeens.

On the tax front, the additional levies on diesel will mean that cars and SUVs using that fuel could cost extra Rs 4,000 at the bottom end of the scale and upwards of Rs 25,000 more at the premium end.

Similarly, the hike in value-added tax on tobacco products and sweets and savouries to 12.5% could make your pocket that much lighter, but that’s supposed to save you from lifestyle diseases.

The most ambitious of the welfare measures is a scheme for free healthcare for all children under the age of 14 in government schools, government-aided schools and those run by the MCD, the NDMC or the Cantonment Board. That’s an estimated 27 lakh kids to be covered by what has been dubbed the Chacha Nehru Sehat Yojana.