Opposition parties on Thursday described Budget 2018-19 as “anti-poor” with the main Opposition Congress saying that the Government had “thrown in the towel” and failed to address key issues in the economy.
The Budget proposals should have been “bold and radical”, senior Congress leader and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram said.
“It is a defeatist budget. I think they have thrown in the towel. It is a budget of a Government which has conceded that it has failed to address key issues in the economy. Unfortunately, the budget proposals are a big letdown,” Chidambaram told reporters here.
Chidambaram also picked holes in the Government’s budgetary promise of providing insurance coverage of up to Rs 5 lakh to 10 crore poor families and said it was a “big jumla” (gimmick).
“The Finance Minister fails the fiscal consolidation test and this failure will have serious consequences,” Chidambaram was quoted by the PTI as saying earlier in the day.
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said “the fiscal arithmetic” of the Budget for 2018-’19 could be incorrect. “I don’t think I can blame the Budget for being motivated by scoring points in elections, but fiscal arithmetic is at fault,” he said. “This Budget is high on projecting a bright picture, but how will that be sustained [by the underlying fiscal arithmetic”, he was reported as saying. The left parties called the budget a “big jumla” (rhetoric) of the Government which has elections on its mind.
“This budget, being the last one for this Government, clearly shows it is announcing the schemes keeping in mind the coming lok Sabha polls.”It is a campaign for them. We consider it as a ‘big jumla’. We think it is an election campaign as talks are going on for early elections,” said CPI(M) lok Sabha leader Mohd Salim.