A day after finance minister Pranab Mukherjee tabled the Union Budget, the main Opposition BJP dubbed it a “status quoist” exercise. The party on Tuesday said the proposals made in it lacked vision and has failed to boost the confidence of the people. “We had hoped that it would be a brave Budget. A Budget with big thoughts. But it is a status quoist Budget,” Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj said.
Addressing a gathering of industry captains, she said the proposals made by Mr Mukherjee lacked vision, were partial in approach, had no “actual” solution to tackle corruption and had nothing concrete on infrastructure development.
“According to the Budget speech, Railways, NHAI and HUDCO will raised bonds worth `35,000 crores. When infrastructure needs lots more money, the government will depend on loans for the sector... We should be talking of at least `2 lakh crore for infrastructure,” she said. She alleged Mr Mukherjee made special allocations for West Bengal and Kerala with an eye on Assembly elections.