The Congress said the interim budget presented by the government on Thursday is missing on both accountability and vision and questioned how many of the promises made in the last ten years have been fulfilled.
The Opposition party alleged that the ruling NDA’s approach to the economy and governance is biased in favour of the rich and the budget neither talks about the promised two crore jobs every year nor about taming inflation or doubling farmers’ incomes.
“It is a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich,” former Finance Minister P Chidambaram alleged.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said the finance minister has said that they will present a white paper on the previous government.
“In this context, we ask the Modi Government, how many of the promises made by the government in the last 10 years have been fulfilled,” he said, adding only big dreams have been shown to people, schemes relaunched by changing names, but what happened to old promises has not been told.
“How will the new dreams being shown get fulfilled,” he asked.
“Both accountability and vision are missing from this interim Budget. We expected some new schemes to ease the suffering of the poor and middle class from this Interim Budget 2024,” the Congress chief said.
Chidambaram said at a press conference that the finance minister spoke about GDP but didn’t address per capita income. She barely referred to inflation, and she failed to mention that food inflation is currently at 7.7 per cent, he said.