Several Opposition leaders have written to President Pranab Mukherjee against the advancement of the budget session of Parliament to just before the Assembly elections.
“Advancing the presentation of the Budget gives an unfair advantage to the ruling party to influence the voters by announcing populist schemes, thereby undermining a free and fair election. Therefore, it is our considered view that the presentation of the Budget, instead of being advanced, should be postponed to only after the Assembly elections,” said the letter to the President written by Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and signed by Sharad Yadav (Janata Dal-United), Mallikarjuna Kharge (Congress), Naresh Agrawal (supporter of Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav), D.Raja (Communist Party of India) and S.C. Mishra (Bahujan Samajwadi Party), among others.
Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad also wrote to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Nasim Zaidi .
The letter to the President recalled that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had in 2012 postponed the budget and presented it after the Assembly polls.
Yechury faults numbers
CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury took to Facebook to point out what he saw as economic flaws of the move to advance the budget.
“The advance GDP (Gross Domestic Product) estimates for the ongoing FY (financial year) were released in February, and meant actual data for three quarters [of the financial year] was considered. Now, with the advance estimates being released in January, actual data for only the first two quarters (so only till September 2016) will be considered,” he wrote.
“This is bound to present a wrong and misleading picture of India’s GDP growth rate, which is bound to be revised downwards heavily later on.”
Mayawati joins chorus
In Lucknow, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati urged the Election Commission (EC) to direct the Centre not to announce the Union Budget on February 1, which is just 10 days ahead of the first phase of voting in U.P.
The Budget should be announced on any day after the last date of polling on March 8, she said. Declaring the Budget right before the election meant that “voters could be influenced” and the election would “not be impartial”, she added.
(With Omar Rashid)
