61% surveyed rate Budget 2017 as good

Sixty-one per cent of 8,500 respondents in a survey rated the budget as good.

Twenty-seven per cent said it was average, 10 per cent said it was poor and 2 per cent did not have an opinion, according to the survey conducted by citizen engagement platform Local Circles.

The organisation has also compiled a list of priorities that the citizens had proposed for this year's budget before it was announced.

Citizens wanted infrastructure and agriculture to be the top priority of the budget 2017 and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley obliged by announcing this on Thursday, according to the survey results.

It said that the government has also accepted the demand for keeping safety as the topmost priority for railways in 2017-18.

The biggest asks by citizens through LocalCircles were on tax reforms and they were satisfied as the government reduced the tax rate from 10 per cent to 5 per cent for annual income between Rs 2.5 lakhs to Rs 5 lakhs.

Some of the other citizen demands that were delivered were opening more hospitals, reduction of cash donation to political parties and withdrawal of service charges from ticket bookings on IRCTC website.

However, some citizen demands were not met in the budget.

Infrastructure of existing government hospitals to be improved, improved delivery of government schools and start-up benefits to be extended to startups/SMEs less than 5 years old.

The citizens had also demanded aggressive investment in public transportation system in cities to reduce pollution and use of Swachh Bharat cess corpus to engage citizens and municipality in Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.