West Bengal’s finance minister Asim Dasgupta on Monday introduced some dark clouds over Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s vision of the changing face of Bengal as he tabled a `limited’ deficit budget for 2008-09.

Dasgupta, halving the additional resource mobilization to Rs 75 crore over last year’s figure and looking for additional resources, hit Bhattacharjee’s pet project, the Tata Motors’ Nano, with a higher road tax, even before the first car has rolled out of Singur.

Road tax will go up by Rs 2000 to Rs 10,000 depending on a set of listed factors and hit every new car model, and is expected to fetch Rs 15 crore.

“Even capitalists admit that industry’s development is reflected in tax collections,” Dasgupta told reporters after tabling the budget in the Assembly on Monday.

While Bhattacharjee has welcomed Mukesh Ambani’s farm-to-table retail business, which has a Rs 25,000 crore national investment plan, Dasgupta proposes an `alternative’: a new corporation with Rs 100 crore as government equity for “procurement and supply of commodities” at fair price shops through self-help groups (SHGs).

“This is not my personal budget,” he told reporters when asked in what way his budget backed the Chief Minister’s vision. “The Chief Minister was among those with whom I discussed the proposals while drawing up the budget.”

Dasgupta’s attempt at “social business” comes after the failure of two handloom marketing cooperatives and in the backdrop of the Chief Minister’s invitation to private Indian capital in the sector.

Terming it a “common man’s budget”, Dasgupta denied that the proposals were aimed at the elections.(Panchayat elections are scheduled for May this year.) “We have some election or the other every year,” he said.

Dasgupta proposes to raise an extra Rs 30 crore from foreign liquor by levying the state excise on the MRP minus an abatement of 65%, rather than the alcohol content.

He expects to net another Rs 30 crore from yet another one-time settlement of sales tax diputes. These three heads add up to an ARM of Rs 75 crore, against around Rs 150 crore in 2007-08.

Dasgupta also refused to comment on the possible impact of the 6 th Central Pay Commission on his budget numbers. Last time, when the state followed the 5 th Pay Commission, it took the state years to come out of the financial crisis.