New Delhi, February 1: Asserting that the interim budget presented by the union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the parliament today, lacked vision and accountability, the Congress President Shri Mallikarjun Kharge said that ever since the Modi government came to power, it has only shown big dreams to people without any intention to fulfil them.

“Schemes are re-launched by changing names. But it is not told what happened to the old promises? How will the new dreams being shown get fulfilled?” he asked, while pointing out, “any budget has two aspects: One to provide a status report on the previous years, and the other is to provide a vision for the next year, both of these are missing from this Interim Budget”.

The Congress President posed a series of questions to the Modi government asking how many of the promises made by the government in the last 10 years have been fulfilled? He pointed out, there was no mention of those promises in the Budget like providing 2 crore jobs annually, doubling farmers’ income, concrete houses for all by 2022, 100 SMART cities etc.

Kharge Ji asked how did the agricultural growth rate, which was 4.6% in 2014 plunge to 1.8% this year and why are 31 farmers forced to commit suicide every day? Referring to low spending on education, he asked why it fell to 3.2 percent from 4.55% in 2014.

He asked why was the share of SC, ST, OBC and minority welfare allocations falling continuously and why was the defence spending and healthcare spending declining? Questioning the FM claims that the income of the common people has increased, Kharge Ji said, this was a lie while the truth is that the wages in rural India have decreased in the last 5 years.

The Congress President asked why did the average GDP Growth rate of the country, which was 8% during the Congress led UPA regime, decline to just 5.6% under Modi Govt?

Congress President Shri Mallikarjun Kharge’s comment on Budget 2024