Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram led the opposition criticism at Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who presented her ninth consecutive budget today. “Union Budget certainly not a bold exercise in fiscal prudence and consolidation,” P Chidambaram, senior Congress leader and four-time Finance Minister said.
Poll bound state leaders not happy?
TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee expressed his displeasure over the exclusion of Bengal from the budget. West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee also called the Budget “directionless , action-less, mission-less and vision-less”.
“The Budget that was presented was 1 hour and 25 minutes of the speech of Union Finance Minister. Eighty five minutes means 5,100 seconds. In these 5,100 seconds, Bengal’s name was not taken even once…There was no concrete discussion on how will jobs be provided to the youth and how will employment be generated,” he said.
“There is no financial security for farmers…This is a faceless, baseless and visionless Budget…Centre views Bengal as Bangladesh,” Banerjee added.
‘Pheku, lapetu budget’
TMC MP Shatrughan Sinha also criticised the Budget, calling it a “lapetu and pheku” one. “This Budget is not for Viksit Bharat. It doesn’t address employment or the country’s current debt. The Union govt owes money to many states…This budget doesn’t deserve to be given a rating,” he said.
‘Nothing about this Budget satisfies me as a Malayali’
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who represents Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram constituency, also said he wasn’t satisfied with the Budget.
“There is nothing in this budget that makes me satisfied as a Malayali…Kerala is the largest coconut-producing state. In fisheries, too, there should be some benefit for us. On ship repairing, when Varanasi and Patna were mentioned, I did not hear anything about Kerala. This is a little surprising,” Tharoor said.
Meanwhile, Congress leader KC Venugopal called the budget “disappointing,” saying that, despite Kerala contributing significantly to sectors such as tourism, aviation, and health, no concrete allocation has been made for the poll-bound state.
Both Kerala and West Bengal are slated to head to the polls this year.
What did poll bound states get?
Of the seven new high-speed rail corridors announced in the Budget, Tamil Nadu, which will also head to the polls, will get two, with Chennai being connected to the IT hubs of Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
The Centre also said it will support Tamil Nadu and Kerala in establishing dedicated Rare Earth Corridors to promote mining, processing, research and manufacturing.
As for West Bengal, the government announced a high-speed rail corridor connecting Siliguri with Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.
The Budget also proposed a dedicated freight corridor from Dankuni in the Kolkata Metropolitan Region to Surat in Gujarat.