NEW DELHI, Feb 1
Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the interim budget in Parliament on Thursday and the Opposition is less enthusiastic about the announcements.
Calling it usually rhetoric, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said, “It was one of the shortest speeches on record in the Budget. Not very much came out of it. As usual a lot of rhetorical language, very little concrete on implementation.”
Tharoor added that the budget speech was disappointing. “She talked about foreign investment without acknowledging that that investment has come down significantly. She talked about a number of things which are couched in vague language like ‘confidence’ and ‘hope’ and so on. But when it comes to hard figures, very few figures are available. This is going to be a very disappointing speech in terms of being couched entirely in generalities and without enough substance nor any willingness to address the specific problems of the economy.”
Congress MP Karti Chidambaram said it was a mere administrative exercise to ensure that the government of India has the requisite funds to carry on its normal business until a new government is formed. Congress MP Manish Tewari said, “This budget only has one motive, which is that the Centre can work easily in the first quarter of this fiscal year. The main topic of concern is that in the last fiscal year which will end on 31 March 2024, there is a budgetary deficit of Rs 18 lakh crore.”
Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi said, “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.”
Shiromani Akali Dal MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal said, “There was nothing in the Budget.
One thing I appreciate is that since it’s a pre-poll Budget, freebies will be announced; they didn’t do that but they patted their own back,”
DMK MP Dayanidhi Maran said nothing much has changed and people were already disappointed.
Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi criticised that the budget did not include anything for the middle class and the poor.
