The Chief Minister of Delhi Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday said that the people have been left hugely disappointed by the Union Budget 2022-23.
Taking to the micro-blogging website, twitter, Kejriwal said, “The public had huge aspirations from the Budget due to the pandemic’s woes. The people have been left bereft. There’s nothing in this budget for the common man, nothing that will reduce the backbreaking inflation.”
Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia both hit out at the BJP-ruled Centre saying the Union Government presented an ill-thought Budget.
Sisodia said, the Budget was the most anti-farmer one in the history of India. “The Centre did not just reduce allocation for the minimum selling price (MSP) of crops but also the number of beneficiaries of MSP and procurement targets. What the Centre has done to our farmers is nothing less than stealing from the plate of the hungry and 60 lakh jobs in five years are nothing more than a jumla. What will you do with these jobs when 5.5 crore people roam unemployed in the present. The PLI scheme under which the Centre wants to generate employment has not created one job in two years. The Centre is bent on defunding education; they reduced education sector’s budget so poor’s children stay uneducated,” he said.
“The Centre must allocate six per cent of its Budget to education for this policy to become a reality. But in reality, the Centre is reducing the education budget.
They reduced the already abysmal share of education from 2.67 per cent to 2.64 per cent. The Budget for skilling was reduced by a staggering 30per cent. They talk about the merits of the NEP but continue to defund the education sector. There cannot be a bigger hypocrite than this regime.”
“Despite seeing the tragedies of Covid, the Centre did not increase the budget allocation for the health sector. Are the lives of the common man a joke?
“The Middle Class feeds India’s economy but the BJP’s Central Government has backstabbed it today. Reducing tax slabs could have increased the purchasing power of the already stressed Middle Class.
“Also, barely Rs 325 crore was allotted to Delhi from a total of Rs 8.16 lakh crore in central taxes. Not a single penny allotted to the MCD while all other civic bodies have been given funds by the Centre,” he added.
“We are all aware that 60 per cent of the employment in our country depends solely on our agricultural sector. For the past one year, our farmers left their fields and sat on the roads braving all kinds of harsh weather, demanding MSP rights and the repealing of the three black farm laws.
“Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman stated today that the target for the purchase of paddy and wheat has been reduced from 1,286 MT to 1,208 MT. Imagine the blindsidedness of this Government that reduced the procurement target of two crucial crops like these. MSP allocation has been reduced from Rs 2.48 lakh crore to Rs 2.37 lakh crore. They did not just reduce their targeted procurement but also the Budget allocation essential for the agriculture sector by 4.5 per cent. This is a complete fraud,” he added.
“The Centre itself is admitting that it is reducing the scope of the scheme and the beneficiaries will reduce from 1.97 crore farmers to 1.68 crore. There could not have possibly been a more anti-farmer Budget in our history,” he said.