Chennai: Chief Minister M K Stalin described the Union Budget presented by the Finance Minister Nirmala Seetharaman on Tuesday as a ‘budget that had forgotten people’s welfare’ and said that it was disappointing in all ways and aimed at taking away the rights of the States.
Embellished in flowery language, the Budget has not lowered the income tax limit or any schemes for the farmers who fought the three agriculture laws, Stalin said in his reaction to the Budget.
Pointing out that no financial support for the State’s schemes had been announced, he said it had let down Tamil Nadu and its people as there are no allocation of funds for national disaster relief, no new railway project, no allotment for the Godavari-Pennar-Cauvery River water scheme and no earmarking of funds for the Military Expressway project in the State.
The reduction of funds to the MGNREGA by Rs 25,000 crore was not just aimed at hampering a project brought in by the UPA government but also to ensure that the people in the lowest rung of society did not have even a penny with them, Stalin said.
The State Capital investment of Rs 1 lakh crore, ostensibly under cooperative federalism, was a farce, Stalin said that it would only enable the implementation of Union Government’s projects and did not provide for allotting the funds unconditionally to the States.
The ‘One Nation – One Registration’ announced by Nirmala Seetharaman was aimed at taking away the State’s rights and the budget on the whole betrayed the Big Brother attitude of the Union Government, he said.
Regretting the lack of support for Climate Change, he said that there were no schemes to provide succor to those affected by the Coronavirus pandemic.
Also the reduction of the deficit limit for the States to 4 per cent was flayed by the Chief Minister, who said by allowing 0.5 per cent for the electricity department the Union Government was putting the State that provided free electricity to farmers in a quandary.
