The Congress on Friday described the Union Budget 2019 as “insipid” and called Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s speech as an “unusually opaque exercise”.
Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters, former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said the Budget has been prepared without listening to the voices of either ordinary citizens or knowledgeable economists. Instead of providing “meaningful relief” to any section of the people, the Finance Minister chose protectionist measures like hiking customs duty or “exploitative” moves like imposing a cess on petrol and diesel, he said.
The former finance minister expressed surprise that details like total expenditure, total revenue or fiscal deficit were not a part of Ms. Sitharaman’s speech.
“There are a large number of people who are listening to the speech and they don’t get the documents…Why are they keeping people in the dark? I think its unfair and unethical to not let them know of these numbers,”he said.
“Nothing is clear and it is one of the most opaque speeches. You can’t make out what they are trying to do,” he added.
Congress’ deputy leader in Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma told The Hindu that the Budget won’t help the government meet its ambitious target of making India a $5 trillion dollar economy in the next five year. “This Budget gives nothing to kickstart the economy. And to reach $5 trillion, we have to grow at around 18% every year,” Mr. Sharma said.
Congress’ chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said the Budget is anti-farmr and anti-youth. “Zero on economic revival. Zero on rural growth. Zero on job creation. Zero on Urban rejuvenation. Can a mundane jugglery of ‘acronyms’ pass off for vision for a 'New India'?" he said on Twitter.
Pro-corporate: BJD
Other Opposition leaders also criticised the Budget, calling it high on symbolism but low on substance. They also panned the Budget for not laying down a clear path to the government’s stated goal of doubling farmers’ incomes by 2024, and completely ignoring the job crisis facing the country.
Biju Janata Dal’s Rajya Sabha MP Prasanna Acharya said, “The Budget favours the corporate [sector] far more than labourers and farmers of this country. There is no concrete proposal to double the income of farmers as they had promised. This is an ornamental budget.” He also condemned the additional tax on petrol and diesel.
Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury went a step further calling the Budget “fraudulent”. “The FM has used February 2019 interim Budget’s revised estimates as the revised estimates for the whole year 2018-19! Expenditure cuts in the last quarter in the run-up to polls are not accounted for. So, a rosy picture of the economy is based on jugglery,” he said.
‘Dream Budget’
Trinamool Congress leader Derek O’ Brien said it’s a “dream” budget where the government is still only selling dreams and not delivering. “FDI in media, aviation and more benefits to foreign insurance intermediaries means government has introduced concept of “Sell India”.
The Telugu Desam Party’s Lok Sabha floor leader K. Rammohan Naidu said the Budget looks more like a book of quotations. “The interim budget had covered more aspirations of people compared to the actual budget — may be because at that the government was seeking a re-election,” he said.
Jobs and the issue of job creation has not been addressed in policy terms,” he added. Mr. O’Brien also said that since the Railway Budget is subsumed in the Union Budget, very little attention is given to the subject.
