Winning Bizness Desk
Mumbai. The Union Budget presented by the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had a clear and visible message reflecting the lessons learned from the setback suffered by the Bharatiya Janata Party in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. All attempts have been made in the budget to woo its political allies by the BJP, which failed to get a majority on its own for the first time in ten years. Resultantly, few experts along with opposition are dubbing this budget of Bihar and Andhra Pradesh and not of the entire nation. Akhilesh Yadav, prominent opposition leader of Uttar Pradesh, the largest state of the country, blamed the BJP government for jeopardising the development of Uttar Pradesh.
Notably, the recently concluded election, which was fought under the Narendra Modi leadership, BJP did not get an absolute majority on its own and Therefore, the NDA government has shown a sense of continuity in the selection of ministers and bureaucracy to run its projects and administration smoothly. But the first general budget of the government, which has come to power for the third consecutive time, showed clear cracks, especially in the effort to placate parties like Nitish Kumar's JDU and N Chandrababu Naidu's TDP.
Haryana and Maharashtra ignored
Interestingly, no project was announced in the budget for two electoral states Haryana and Maharashtra, where BJP or BJP-supported governments are currently in power and both states will be facing state assembly election in three months. While Bihar and Andhra Pradesh were mentioned five times each in the budget speech, most of the other states were not mentioned in it. Sitharaman announced projects worth about Rs 59,000 crore for Bihar, including three expressways, a power plant, heritage corridor, new airport and infrastructure development for sports and provision of funds to deal with floods. Similarly, to please Chandrababu Naidu, the CM of for Andhra Pradesh, Finance Minister said that the central government will fulfill the promises made under the Andhra Pradesh Reorganization Act, which includes special financial assistance through multilateral development agencies for the redevelopment of the state capital Amaravati. Rs 15,000 crore will be given to the state in the current financial year. In future, more help has been promised to Andhra Pradesh in the budget. Nirmala Sitharaman also promised to finance the Polavaram irrigation project for its timely completion.
FM also announced to provided all meauers to strengthen the infrastructure of water, energy, railways and roads in Kopparthi node on Visakhapatnam-Chennai Industrial Corridor and Orvakal node on Hyderabad-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor in Andhra Pradesh. This year, additional allocation will also be made for capital investment for economic growth.
The Finance Minister said that the government has proposed a scheme named Purvodaya for the all-round development of the eastern part of the country including Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. Despite suffering a major setback in the Lok Sabha elections here, except Odisha, the BJP has chosen this state for Purvodaya, hoping that it will benefit from this in the assembly elections. Interestingly, FM announced that the central government will cooperate in the development of Gaya Industrial Node on the Amritsar-Kolkata Industrial Corridor in Bihar. Apart from this, financial assistance will be given for the construction of Patna-Purnia Expressway, Buxar-Bhagalpur Expressway, road projects connecting Bodh Gaya, Rajgir, Vaishali and Darbhanga and a two-lane bridge over the Ganges River in Buxar at a cost of Rs 26,000 crore. Sitharaman said that the central government will spend Rs 21,400 crore for power plants including the establishment of a 2,400 MW power plant in Pirpainti, Bihar. Additional funds will also be provided for capital investment. The demand of the Bihar government for external assistance from the Multipurpose Development Bank will also be met soon.
Facing steep criticism from the opposition, for very little allocation for Maharashtra in the budget, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis countered that Maharashtra will get Rs 908 crore under MUTP-3 (Mumbai Urban Transport Project). This will help in strengthening the local rail network, including Mumbai Metro to get Rs 1,087 crore. A provision of Rs 499 crore has been made in the budget for the Mumbai-Delhi corridor, while Rs 150 crore has been given to MMR Green Urban Transport and Rs 683 crore for Nagpur Metro. A provision of Rs 814 crore has also been made for Pune Metro in the budget, while Rs 690 crore has been kept for Mula Mutha river related schemes, but the opposition parties did not seem happy with this.
Copy Paste Budget - Rahul Gandhi
Slamming the budget, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged that it makes “hollow promises” to the allies of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the expense of other states. Referring to it as a “Kursi Bachao Budget”, the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha also claimed that the Budget was designed to “appease cronies”. “Benefits to AA with no relief for the common Indian,” Rahul wrote in a post on X. He further said that the Budget, presented by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, was a “copy and paste” of the manifesto of the Congress party and previous budgets.
