'Directionless' budget disappointing for the common people: Pilot

Jaipur, Feb 1 (IANS) Congress General Secretary and former Rajasthan Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot termed the Interim Budget presented by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Parliament on Thursday as "directionless" and "disappointing", noting that "apart from glorifying the last 10 years of the BJP government", there was nothing new.

He said that in his budget speech, the Union Minister has claimed to bring 25 crore people out of the poverty line but did not clarify that if this figure is 25 crore, then it also includes 14 crore poor people during the time of UPA government.

"BJP government is giving free food grain to 80 crore poor people, and shows filing of income tax returns by about 8 crore people, who belong to the middle and upper class. In such a situation, which class of people have been taken out of the poverty line is questionable," he added.

Pilot said that the demand of Congress to increase the scope of Ayushman Bharat has been ignored in this Interim Budget and the health of common citizens has been ignored.

"Not reducing the excise duty of petrol and diesel, not giving income tax exemption to the middle class, not making any concrete announcement to provide relief to farmers are examples of the anti-people policy of the BJP government," he said.

He said that the government may pat itself on the back regarding GDP but unless there is a relationship between GDP and employment, it will be difficult to control unemployment. He said that the poor, youth and farmers have been deeply disappointed by not including issues like inflation, unemployment, and low agricultural production in the interim budget.

Responding to the statement of the Finance Minister presenting a white paper on the financial situation of 2014, Pilot said that in view of the Lok Sabha elections, after ten years, whatever the BJP government does for political purposes, the youth of the country will not get employment.

Farmers are troubled by their income not increasing in proportion to their expenses and small and medium industries are troubled by the deteriorating economic condition, he added.

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