Budget 2021 | Finance Minister has deceived people of India: Chidambaram
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Why is there was no enhance in Defence funds for troopers, asks Rahul.
The Congress mentioned on Monday that the Union Budget for 2021-22 was full of “deceptions”, with former Finance Minister P. Chidamabaram charging Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman with not sharing data akin to imposing new cesses on a big quantity of merchandise, together with petrol and diesel.
He additionally accused Ms. Sitharaman of “conjuring” up thoughts boggling numbers within the Health sector, questioned her silence on Defence allocation that he claimed was “flat” and accused the federal government of “bleeding” public sector banks to promote them off
Separately, former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi tweeted that as a substitute of “putting cash in the hands of the people, Modi Govt plans to hand over India’s assets to his crony capitalist friends”.
In one other tweet, Mr. Gandhi puzzled why there was no enhance within the Defence funds for the troopers, although “Mr. Modi did PR photo-op with them on Diwali”.
Former Commerce Minister Anand Sharma too expressed his disappointment and mentioned Ms. Sitharaman “chose to be timid when she was required to be bold”.
Addressing a press convention together with Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala, Mr. Chidamabaram mentioned, “she did not mention Defence at all, as if the Chinese had vacated occupied Indian territory. She did not mention that Defence expenditure in 2021-22 will see no rise. It is flat at ₹3,47,088 crore, almost the same as the ₹3,43,822 crore in the current year”.
Talking concerning the well being sector allocation, he mentioned the federal government added expenditure underneath vaccination (₹35,000 crore), Finance Commission grant (₹49,214 crore) and sums allotted to sanitation and water. “Shorn of these add-ons, the allocations for Health were ₹72,934 in 2020-21 and ₹79,602 crore in 2021-22,” he mentioned.
The senior Congress chief mentioned the Finance Minister had “deceived” the people of India, particularly the poor, working class, migrants, farmers, industrial items that had been closed down completely and people who had misplaced their jobs, each common and casual. He mentioned the tax aid had utterly bypassed tax paying working class and center class.
“She deceived those who were listening to her speech, especially the MPs, who had no clue that she had imposed cesses on a large number of products, including petroleum and diesel: ₹2.50 on petrol per litre and ₹4.00 on diesel per litre is a cruel blow to the average citizen, including the farmers. It was a vengeful act against the thousands of farmers who took out the longest tractor rally in history,” he mentioned.
Mr. Chidamabaram famous that although the Finance Minister had referred to farmers 11 instances in her speech, agriculture sector had been “shortchanged”, micro small medium enterprises (MSME) sector was “dismissed” with a “meagre” allocation of ₹15,700 crore and there was no rescue plan for the closed items.
Talking concerning the massive quantity of ballot sops for Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Assam, he mentioned “people are not fools” to know the distinction between precise expenditure and outlays.
The former Finance Minister mentioned that not solely do the present Revenue Deficit (7.5%) and the Fiscal Deficit (9.5%) level to a “fiscal situation mess”, however even the projected deficit figures for 2021-22 would ship alarm indicators to worldwide lenders and buyers with no clear roadmap for Fiscal Deficit to return to a goal of round 3%.
The senior Congress chief additionally acknowledged that the “borrowing” quantity had been under-stated’ on the “questionable” assumption that the disinvestment proceeds would fetch ₹1.75 lakh crore and tax revenues would enhance by 15 per cent.
Mr. Chidamabaram additionally demanded a probe to learn the way Bloomberg information company put out the Revenue Deficit and Fiscal Deficit numbers 40 minutes earlier than the Finance Minister learn it in her speech.