Modi Government’s ‘Farewell Budget’ Is ‘Empty Envelope’: Congress On Interim Budget

Business Edited by
Modi Government’s ‘Farewell Budget’ Is ‘Empty Envelope’: Congress On Interim Budget

Modi Government’s ‘Farewell Budget’ Is ‘Empty Envelope’: Congress On Interim Budget

Opposition Congress called the interim Budget presented by Nirmala Sitharaman today in Parliament a farewell budget and said it has turned out to be an ‘empty envelope’.

“Like the “General Budget” of the Modi government, interim Budget2024 also turned out to be an “empty envelope”!,” wrote senior Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala on X.

After listing various issues including unemployment, decreasing women’s participation in workforce, ever-increasing inflation and financial crisis in the country, Mr Surjewala said the “Modi government, which waives off lakhs of crores of rupees to its capitalist friends and continuously gives exemption in “Corporate Tax”, does nothing except “picking the pockets” of the common people of the country and making “false statements”!.”

Another Congress MP, Adhir Ranjan Choudhary said that the Budget is nothing but a method to “woo people in this year’s Lok Sabha elections”.

Speaking to ANI, another Congress MP, Karti Chidambaram said the Interim Budget was a “mere administrative exercise to ensure that the government of India has the requisite funds to carry on its normal business until the new parliament is constituted and a new government is formed. And that”s what they have done, except for making their obligatory self-congratulatory, self-praise phrases, nothing else is there and nothing should have been there, and rightly so. Nothing is there.”

 

Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP from Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram said that the Budget speech was “short and disappointing”. He said it was a typical one that usually comes ahead of the elections, where only one part of the narrative was said. Talking about the capital expenditure budget for the next year, as said by the Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, he asked “What is this – a budget for a large nation based on analysis or some numerology prayer for elections?”.

 

Manish Tiwari, another Congress MP stated that the there is a budget deficit of Rs 18 crores, which he called “worrying”. He said the deficit means that the government is borrowing for its expenditure.