New Delhi: The Congress on Saturday slammed the Union Budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and said that while Bihar seemed to have got the Bonanza of announcements due to Assembly elections this year, Andhra Pradesh, where NDA is also in power.
The main Opposition party also expressed its disappointment over the proposals made on various engines like MSMEs, agriculture, exports, and investments in the Budget. Saturday’s Budget was the NDA Government’s 14th since it came to power in 2014. Sitharaman also presented his eighth budget on the day.
“Bihar appears to have got a bonanza of announcements. It is natural since elections are due there later in the year. But why has the other pillar of the NDA, namely Andhra Pradesh, been so cruelly ignored?” Congress leader Jairam Ramesh wrote on X.
The budget failed to address several issues: Jairam Ramesh
He added, “The FM spoke of 4 engines: Agriculture, MSMEs, Investment, and Exports. So many engines that the Budget has been completely derailed. He added that the economy is suffering from stagnance in real wages, lack of buoyancy in mass consumption, Sluggish rates of private investment, and a complex and complicated GST system.”
He added that while the Budget did nothing to address such issues, the only relief was for income taxpayers. “The only relief has been for income taxpayers. What actual impact this will have on the economy remains to be seen,” Ramesh wrote.
‘No announcement on including breakfast in schools’
He added that while the finance minister announced the revision of cost norms in Saksham aanganawadi and Poshan 2.0, after many years of turning them down, there were no announcements on various areas like including breakfast in schools, upward revision in the honorarium given to Anganwadi workers, among others.
