Shimla, January 29:
As Himachal Pradesh begins preparations for the State Budget 2026-27, public suggestions for the Sukhu government are rather unpleasant for the state babudom.
The suggestions gathered by the Himbumail reveal a clear, uncompromising mandate: slash luxury spending, cap elite privileges and redirect resources to farmers, workers, and the vulnerable common citizens not in government jobs.
From governance costs and pensions to horticulture, media welfare and frontline wages, citizens are demanding a budget rooted in survival, dignity and economic realism, not optics.
1. Governance & Political Expenditure: Austerity Must Begin at the Top
At the forefront is a demand to stop the purchase of new luxury vehicles for the Governor, Chief Minister, ministers and senior bureaucrats.
Citizens have also called for pruning the ever-expanding army of OSDs, political advisors, Advocate Generals, Additional Advocate Generals, Deputies and parallel power centres, which are seen as politically convenient but financially unsustainable.
What an irony, the government has its battery of over 90 ADGs, but it is hiring private lawyers to plead its cases in high court and Supreme Court! They should paid not more than Rs 50,000 per month.
Public suggestions also seek a ban on government celebrations, ceremonies and publicity-driven events - three years function of Sukhu government spent Rs 10 Crore in Mandi alone- terming them non-planned avoidable expenditure at a time of fiscal stress.
2. Salaries & Perks: Cap the Elite
There is a strong push to introduce a salary ceiling for IAS officers, ministers, MLAs, MPs, vice-chancellors, senior professors, and engineers in government service. But doctors should be spared as Himachal lacks doctors for health care services and many go out as they get higher paybacks in private sector.But let them volunteer if they want a cap on pension or salary.
Citizens argue that a welfare hill state burdened with debt cannot justify insulated, inflation-proof top salaries- imagine officials getting Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2 lakh per month as pension.
Shockingly, there are officials who are drawing double even treble pensions under the pleas that they serve in different government jobs!.
Thirdly the central government must bear salary and pension burden of the central pool IAS and IFS officers. Himachal is getting nothing in return for its green eco-services of its forest wealth and hence the Centre must bear their salary and pension bill.
3. Pensions: Welfare for the Poor, Not Perks for the Powerful
Public inputs clearly state that social security pensions must prioritise those who were never in government jobs—elderly, informal workers, widows, the disabled and destitute families and all other families who worked in limited private jobs.
For them, the minimum pension should be raised to ₹20,000 per month, reflecting real survival costs whis is an international standard.
At the same time, citizens have demanded that pensions of retired top government officials be capped at ₹50,000 per month, with the same ceiling applicable to former MLAs and MPs, ending the culture of lifelong privilege funded by the public money.
4. Farmers & Horticulture: Backbone of the Economy Needs Budget Backing
Farmers have flagged serious concerns, pointing out that the Economic Survey of India 2025-26 has clearly established horticulture as a major growth driver within agriculture and a backbone of the national economy.
In Himachal Pradesh, where horticulture sustains lakhs of families, farmers are demanding assured MSP for all major horticultural crops, including apple and vegetables, as a shield against market volatility and crashes that will prevent distress sale.
In view of the recent Supreme Court’s judgment on encroachments, the Sukhu government should frame policy as directed by the Apex court for regularisation of livelihoods of small and marginal farmers on encroachments not exceeding 20 Bighas and rest should be ejected and raising forest cover.
They argue that the cost of inputs—fertilisers, pesticides, machinery, implements and labour—has gone through the roof, squeezing margins to unsustainable levels.
Farmers want budget support for quality inputs, promotion of natural and organic manure to improve soil fertility and productivity, and a policy shift towards reduced chemical dependence being perpetuated by the poison cartels of chemical companies.
A major demand is for assured supply of healthy, certified seeds and planting material, along with a strict crackdown on bogus products, fake supplements and spurious chemicals flooding markets in the apple belt and other parts of Himachal.
Farmers warn that unchecked sale of substandard inputs is damaging orchards, soil health and long-term productivity.
5. Frontline Workers: Pay the Backbone
There is also a strong demand to substantially raise wages of frontline workers—sanitation staff, health workers, daily wagers and disaster responders—who carry the state through floods, snowstorms and pandemics, breakdown of public infrastructure like electricity but remain the most underpaid.
6. Health & Education: Cut Administrative Fat, Fund Services
Suggestions from parents and professionals urge the government to reduce top-heavy administrative spending in universities and hospitals and redirect funds towards doctors, nurses, equipment, hostels and rural facilities.
7. Infrastructure & Basic Services: Fix What People Depend On
Residents from hill and snow-bound regions want focused spending on all-weather roads, stable power supply, underground cabling in snowfall zones, drinking water schemes and disaster-resilient infrastructure, instead of cosmetic projects that collapse every year due to corruption.
8. Digital Media & Journalism Need Dignified Treatment and Fund Support
Though the government framed a Digital Media Policy in 2025, no assured budgetary support has followed. Journalists have demanded accreditation and welfare support for genuine professionals whose primary probation has been journalism.
Filter out the "fake AI- and algorithm driven social media influencers and socalled journalistsand You Tubers" and treat real journalists with dignity.
At present, there are not more than 200 working journalists in Himachal, the sector reminds the government that media families were among the worst hit during the Covid-19 pandemic, facing layoffs, salary cuts and closures.
They argue that the Sukhu government and any government that follows, has a moral responsibility to support them and ensure dignity, without being guided by bureaucratic apathy.
Real journalists should survive the AI-driven artificial journalism and are needed as long as humanity continues to search for truth and values in democratic world.
9. Fiscal Discipline: Cut Waste, Not Welfare
Experts have urged plugging revenue leakages, strengthening compliance and rationalising expenditure—without squeezing the poor to protect elite comfort.
These sector-wise suggestions aim at making the coming Budget citizen-centric. How much the CM will have his say in the Budget that hovers around Rs 58000 Crore mark is the big question.
Suggestions can be submitted through the Finance Department’s web portal, can be emailed to
The public message is loud and unmistakable: a welfare hill state cannot afford luxury governance.
Budget 2026-27, citizens insist, must prove that economic justice, farmer security and "dignity of non government citizens" are not slogans—but funded priorities.
We have been hearing the successive governments only talking about the babudom, and its other employees - OPS, TA/DA, New Payscale, Arrears- not about the rest of Himachal’s 80 per cent population.
Will the Sukhu Government take a call this time? He should do it in the name of "some real Vyastha Parivartan", considering he is in the last leg of his regime.
