- Tuesday, February 25, 2025
The BJP government has created a shameful record by completing a decade of anti-people budgets, said Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.
By: Shubham Ghosh
HOURS after Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman promised big economic reforms to drive the country’s growth in the interim budget that the Narendra Modi government announced on Thursday (1), the opposition mocked it saying it was a “vidai” (farewell) budget.
The interim budget was presented months ahead of the next general elections. It is meant to meet the federal government’s essential expenditure for the first four months of the new fiscal year beginning April 2024.
A full-fledged budget will be presented after a new government is formed. While the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is confident of returning to power for the third consecutive time, the opposition INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) claimed that it would be the end of the road for the ruling BJP-led National Democratic Alliance coalition.
Read: India will witness unprecedented rise in 5 years: Finance minister in budget
Akhilesh Yadav, one of the major faces of the opposition INDIA bloc and former chief minister of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, said in a tweet in Hindi, “If any budget is not for development and any development is not for the people then it is useless. The BJP government has created a shameful record by completing a decade of anti-people budgets, which will never be broken again because now is the time for a positive government to come. This is BJP’s ‘farewell budget’.”
कोई भी बजट अगर विकास के लिए नहीं है और कोई भी विकास अगर जनता के लिए नहीं है तो वो व्यर्थ है।
भाजपा सरकार ने जनविरोधी बजटों का एक दशक पूरा करके एक शर्मनाक रिकार्ड बनाया है, जो फिर कभी नहीं टूटेगा क्योंकि अब सकारात्मक सरकार आने का समय हो गया है।
ये भाजपा का ‘विदाई बजट’ है।
— Akhilesh Yadav (@yadavakhilesh) February 1, 2024
Yadav, who leads the Samajwadi Party, recently announced names of 16 candidates for the national elections from his state, including his parliamentarian wife Dimple Yadav.
Read: Modi opponent Samajwadi Party announces 16 candidates for 2024 general elections
Uddhav Thackeray, former chief minister of the western state of Maharashtra and leader of Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), also called the latest budget the final one presented by the Modi government. He said they wanted to thank the finance minister for presenting the last budget with “a heavy heart”. Thackeray’s words targeting the Modi government came at a party workers’ meeting in Raigad district of the state.
Priyanka Chaturvedi, an MP from Shiv Sena (UBT) and its deputy leader said Sitharaman poured “cold water” on people’s expectations.
“All I can say is that in this cold weather, what the Finance Minister has done, she has poured cold water over the expectations of the people of this country,” she told reporters outside the parliament in New Delhi.
Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, leader of the main opposition Indian National Congress in the Lok Sabha or Lower House of the parliament, said the budget was only aimed at wooing people ahead of elections.
“Is this a budget to provide employment to the unemployed… This budget is nothing but to woo people in this year’s Lok Sabha elections,” he said.
Dayanidhi Maran, MP from Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the ruling party of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, said the finance minister took a long time to hail praises but delivery was zero.
Karti Chidambaram, son of former Indian finance minister P Chidambaram and a Congress MP, said the budget only included obligatory self-congratulatory, self-praise phases and nothing else.
Sitharaman in the budget said the government is working towards making India a developed nation by 2047, the year it will turn 100 as an independent entity, adding that it works on the principle of “reform, perform, and transform”.
PM Modi, in a televised address after the budget, said it will empower four pillars of developed India — the young, poor, women and farmers.
“This is a budget of creating India’s future,” he said.
