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Flak for Union Budget |
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The Union Budget, and to a lesser extent, the Railway Budget, presented in Parliament last week have drawn flak from both the opposition BJP-led NDA and the Left allies of the UPA on the ground that it has nothing much to overcome the crises facing the nation on the price front and in the agricultural sector. Political opponents of the ruling UPA said that it lacks clear political direction.
The Budget has also got a thumbs down by and large from industry and the capital market for not laying out a road map for further reforms or show-casing any major economic policy giving impetus to growth.
The Prime Minister termed the budgetary proposals as anti-inflationary, but this view was not shared by the Government’s political opponents.
Speaking during to the debate on the Motion of Thanks, leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani said in the Lok Sabha on March 1 that the UPA government has failed to check rising prices and as a consequence the life of the aam aadmi (common man) has been made miserable as the public is forced to readjust the household budgets practically every day in view of sky-rocketing prices of essential items.
He said efforts should have been made to bring farmers’ suicides to zero level. Advani said the election results in Punjab and Uttarakhand, and earlier in Bihar and Kerala, show that the UPA Government has failed to fulfil its promises.
The Left parties expressed disappointment over the budget proposals saying they lacked measures to control inflation and did not address the problem of unemployment. The CPI(M) said Finance Minister P. Chidambaram had not made use of the opportunities available for resource mobilization, especially taxing the rich. The CPI said that the budget has failed to take steps to provide succor to the crisis ridden peasantry, the working people and the poor.
CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta alleged that sabotage was going on within the UPA Government on the issue of checking inflation. Referring to the recent ban on export of pulses, he alleged that 40,000 tonnes of pulses were exported after the ban came into force by using ‘backdated’ documents.
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