Haryana citizens send 11,000 suggestions to govt.’s AI-based portal for State budget

The Haryana government’s Voice Feedback Portal has received over 11,000 suggestions from citizens across the State for the budget slated to be presented later this month.

Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini had launched the Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based initiative on January 6 to invite suggestions from citizens with the objective of making the State budget for 2026-27 a “People’s Budget”. It marks the first ever use of AI in such a manner within India’s administrative and democratic framework, according to the State government.

“Suggestions concerning local self-governance or municipalities and panchayats topped the list at 750, followed by 450 on infrastructure development, and 200 on education, skill development, and employment,” Raj Nehru, Director General of the Swarna Jayanti Haryana Institute for Fiscal Management, told The Hindu.

He said 20% of respondents were women and other suggestions were related to fiscal resilience, innovation, public finance, ease of doing business, energy, cost rationalisation, digital security, future-ready governance, labour, women, child safety, start-ups, industrial growth, and economic drivers.

As part of the consultation process, the Chief Minister also conducted 12 pre-budget meetings in January, including with sarpanches and councillors for the first time. The process concluded on January 27 after a meeting with MLAs and MPs. Suggestions were also invited through the National Informatics Centre’s portal.

“More than 15,000 suggestions were received from all these mediums for sectors such as agriculture, education, health, finance, infrastructure, panchayati raj, urban development, health, and women and child development,” said Mr. Nehru, who also serves as Officer Special Duty to the Chief Minister.

2,000 shortlisted

All suggestions were collected and analysed by the Swarna Jayanti Haryana Institute for Fiscal Management. Over 2,000 shortlisted suggestions were sent to the heads of various government departments and their final proposals will be presented to the Chief Minister for inclusion in the budget, he said.

Mr. Nehru added that some “very relevant and important suggestions” were received pertaining to women and child development: CCTV cameras and dedicated helplines for women at workplaces, crèches in industries, mandatory Prevention of Sexual Harassment Act audits at all workplaces, and increasing the participation of women in the manufacturing sector. He said 300 such suggestions were shortlisted and the Chief Minister has issued directions to examine them for inclusion in the budget.

The budget will be guided by the State government’s ‘Vision-2047’ document unveiled by Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Panchkula on December 24 last year.

“To align the targets of the State budget with the ‘Vision-2047’ document, the Chief Minister held a day-long brainstorming session in Gurugram on January 6 that was attended by secretaries of various government departments, representatives from the industry, and experts,” Mr. Nehru said.