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Calling the tax relief a mere bid to woo the middle class, the Opposition parties Saturday said that the third-term Modi government’s first full Budget lacked “new ideas,” the “will to reach beyond its grasp.”
Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said that in the wake of the Budget, the slowing economy would just “trudge along on the old path” and deliver the usual 6% or 6.5% growth in 2025-26. “This is a far cry from the 8% growth rate that the CEA (Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran) estimated in order to become a developed country,” he told a press conference.
The only takeaway from Budget 2025-26, Chidambaram said, was that the BJP had made a bid to woo the 3.2-crore tax paying middle-class and the 7.65 crore Bihar electorate ahead of the Assembly elections slated for October-November this year.
The government has cut down expenditure in key sectors like education, health, social welfare, agriculture, rural and urban development, with schemes meant for SCs, STs, OBCs and minorities “suffering cruellest cuts”, he said.
Other Opposition parties echoed this saying the Budget has “nothing to offer for the common people and poor” and was aimed to “help” the incumbent BJP-led NDA in the upcoming Bihar Assembly polls.
Referring to the CEA’s prescription calling for “deregulation” and “getting out of way”, Chidambaram said the Modi dispensation did not care for his advice.
“On the contrary, the Budget is full of new schemes and programmes, many of which are beyond the capacity of this government. I counted at least 15 new schemes or programmes and four new funds. The FM is walking on the worn-out path. She is not willing to break free as we did in 1991 and 2004,” he said.
“She (FM) is not willing to get out of the way of the people, especially the entrepreneurs and the MSMEs and the start-ups. It is the bureaucracy that will be happy with this Budget. The stranglehold of the government on the activities of the people is getting tighter,” Chidambaram said.
The former finance minister also said those who did not believe that the economy was slowing down will believe it now.
Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi said it was “a band-aid for bullet wounds”. In a post on X, he said: “Amid global uncertainty, solving our economic crisis demanded a paradigm shift. But this government is bankrupt of ideas.”
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge alleged that the “Budget is an attempt by the Modi government to fool the people”. He said there was nothing in it for youth, women and farmers.
TMC national general secretary and MP Abhishek Banerjee slammed the Modi government for “focusing” on Bihar elections, highlighting that there was nothing for West Bengal in the Budget.
“There is nothing for common people in the Budget. They have presented the Budget with the upcoming Bihar elections in mind. Last time as well, all announcements were for Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. Andhra Pradesh elections are over, Bihar polls are upcoming, so the state is in focus,” he said.
DMK MP Dayanidhi Maran called the Budget a “big let-down for the country, especially for the middle class”. “Since Bihar elections are coming there are a lot of announcements for Bihar, again fooling the people of Bihar,” he said.
Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav said that more than the statistics of the Budget, people want to know how many people died in the stampede at Maha Kumbh in Prayagraj earlier this week.
As Sitharaman started her Budget speech in the Lok Sabha in the morning, several Opposition members raised slogans, demanding a statement from the government on the Kumbh stampede, and staged a walk-out for a brief while.
The CPI said the Budget neglected the key challenges, “rising unemployment, inflation, increasing inequality and regional disparities.” Calling the Budget “a cruel betrayal of the Indian people,” the CPM said that instead of addressing the lack of purchasing power amid large sections of the population because of unemployment and shrinking wages, the Modi government “is seeking to stimulate the economy by giving tax cuts to the small minority with higher incomes even as expenditures are cut.”
RJD MP Manoj Jha said the Budget was like “old wine in an old bottle, with a leaking cork”. “There is nothing new in the Budget. Bihar already had a Makhana Reserve Centre. They are turning it into a Board. They have chanted Bihar multiple times, but if you look at the Budget’s fine print, the people of the state have been cheated,” he told The Indian Express.
Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray said: “The BJP that spoke of abolition of income tax, around the years 2012-14 before elections, at least is now getting more liberal and negotiating with tax payers on slabs and rebates (with a lot of conditions and hidden clauses). This is the power of the citizens that brought them to 240.”
