“Adopted ideas from Congress Manifesto”: P Chidambaram takes dig at Nirmala Sitharaman over Union Budget

New Delhi [India], July 23 (ANI): Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram took a dig at the Centre over the Union Budget and accused Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman of virtually adopting the ideas from Congress’s 2024 Lok Sabha manifesto.

Addressing a joint press conference in the National Capital along with Congress leader Supriya Shrinate, Chidambaram said, “I have already tweeted that I am happy that the Finance Minister had an opportunity to read the Congress’ Manifesto after the LS 2024 elections.”

“She has virtually adopted the ideas underlying our proposals on the employment-linked incentive (ELI) scheme, the apprenticeship scheme with an allowance to the apprentice, and the abolition of the angel tax. I wish she had adopted many more ideas from the Congress Manifesto,” the Congress veteran said.

He further said that the government did not address the issue of unemployment in the budget presented by Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday.

“The response of the government to unemployment is too little and will have only a little impact on the grave unemployment situation. The claim that the schemes announced by the FM will benefit 290 lakh people is highly exaggerated…,” he said.

Highlighting that inflation is a major challenge, the Congress leader stated, “Inflation is the other major challenge. WPI inflation is 3.4 per cent, CPI inflation is 5.1 per cent, and food inflation is 9.4 per cent….”.

Responding to the Economic Survey for 2023-204, the Congress leader said, “The Economic Survey dismissed the issue of inflation in a few short sentences. The FM dismissed it in ten words in para 3 of her speech. We deplore the casual attitude of the government. And nothing in the Budget Speech gives us confidence that the government will seriously tackle the issue of inflation.”

Expressing concern over the lack of proper education to nearly one-half of children, the Congress leader urged the Central government to help states address these fundamental problems.

“Education, especially school education, is widespread but of poor quality. Nearly one-half of the children are unable to read or write a simple text in any language and are numerically challenged. They are not fit for any skilled job. The central government must drive — and help — the states address these fundamental problems,” he said.

Responding to the ongoing NEET-UG row, the Congress leader said, “Several states have demanded that NEET be scrapped and the states should be free to adopt their own methods of selecting candidates for various courses in medical education.

No response. I did not hear the finance minister refer to school education.”

The Congress leader lamented that the Finance Minister did not address the issue of public healthcare in her Union Budget speech.

“Healthcare is better but not sufficient. Public healthcare is growing quantitatively but not in quality. Out of pocket expenditure is still about 47 per cent of total health expenditure. There is a grave shortage of doctors, nurses, medical technicians, and diagnostic equipment and machines. The central government’s expenditure on healthcare has declined to 0.28 per cent as a proportion of GDP and to 1.9 per cent as a proportion of total expenditure,” the Congress leader said.

“No response. I did not hear the finance minister speak about the grave deficiencies in public healthcare. Moreover, against a BE of Rs 88,956 crore, the government spent only Rs 79,221 crore,” he said.

The Congress leader also said that no tax relief has been given to the poorest sections of the population in the Union Budget 2024-25.

“While some relief has been given to the tax-paying citizen in the 0-20 per cent tax bracket, no relief — I repeat, no relief at all — has been given to the poorer sections of the people, especially those who are non-tax paying wage labourers and casual/daily labourers. The government seems to be blissfully ignorant of its own statistics that wages have stagnated in the last six years while inflation is raging. And such workers are not paid a decent minimum wage,” he said.