Band-aid for bullet wounds: Cong slams Union Budget

New Delhi, Feb 1 (PTI) The Congress Saturday said the Union Budget 2025-26 has nothing to address the "illnesses", which it claimed, the economy was suffering from, while Rahul Gandhi described the Budget as a "band-aid for bullet wounds".

Asserting that the BJP-led Centre has "no new ideas", the Congress said Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is walking on the "worn-out path" and not willing to break free as its governments had done in 1991 and 2004.

The opposition party said the takeaway from the Union Budget 2025-26 is that the ruling BJP is wooing the tax-paying middle-class and the Bihar electorate.

Addressing a press conference here along with his party colleague Gaurav Gogoi, senior Congress leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram said these announcements will be welcomed by the 3.2 crore tax-paying middle class and the 7.65 crore voters of Bihar.

But for the rest of India, the finance minister had nothing more than soothing words, punctuated by the applause of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said.

The finance minister is "walking on the worn-out path and not willing to break free as we did in 1991 and 2004", the Congress leader added.

"She is not willing to de-regulate. She is not willing to get out of the way of people, especially entrepreneurs and MSMEs and start-ups. It is the bureaucracy that will be happy with this budget. The government's stranglehold on the activities of people is getting tighter," the senior Congress leader said.

He said the economy will trudge along on the old path and deliver no more than the usual 6 per cent or 6.5 per cent growth in 2025-26.

"This is a far cry from the 8 per cent growth rate that the CEA estimated in order to become a developed country. In our view, this is a government with no new ideas and no will to reach beyond its grasp," Chidambaram added.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said the government was busy garnering praises for the Union Budget when the entire country was struggling with problems of inflation and unemployment. He asserted that the Budget was an attempt to "dupe" the people.

He said the Budget is aptly described by the Hindi proverb 'Nau sau choohe khake billi hajj ko chali' (meaning to veil a lifetime of wrongdoing with a few token expressions of virtue later in life).

Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi also slammed the Union Budget as a "band-aid for bullet wounds," saying the Centre was "bankrupt of ideas". He said solving the economic crisis demanded a paradigm shift.

"A band-aid for bullet wounds! Amid global uncertainty, solving our economic crisis demanded a paradigm shift," Gandhi said in a post on X.

Later, at a poll rally, he claimed that the Union Budget for 2025-26 is designed to benefit only the country's richest people while providing little relief to common citizens.

The Congress also accused the Narendra Modi government of appearing to offer "bonanza" to Bihar, governed by NDA ally Nitish Kumar, and "cruelly" ignoring Andhra Pradesh, another pillar of the same alliance.

Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said, "The economy is suffering from four related crises -- stagnant real wages, lack of buoyancy in mass consumption, sluggish rates of private investment, complex and complicated GST system." "The Budget does nothing to address these illnesses. The only relief has been for income tax payers," he said on X.

Highlighting the financial performance in 2024-25, Chidambaram said the revised revenue receipts are lower by Rs 41,240 crore and the revised net tax receipts by Rs 26,439 crore.

"On the expenditure side, total expenditure has been cut by Rs 1,04,025 crore and capital expenditure by Rs 92,682 crore. Of this cut, the sectors that have suffered the most, and the amounts cut, are -- health: Rs 1,255 crore, education: Rs 11,584 crore, social welfare: Rs 10,019 crore, agriculture: Rs 10,992 crore, rural development: Rs 75,133 crore, urban development: Rs 18,907 crore, development of the northeast: Rs 1,894 crore," Chidambaram said.

He said the cruellest cuts were in the allocations for the Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward Classes (OBC) and minorities. He cited the examples of the Pradhan Mantri Anusuchit Jaati Abhyuday Yojana, Prime Minister Young Achievers Scholarship for OBC, EBC, DNTs, Post Matric Scholarship for SCs and Programme for Development of STs.

He urged people to look at the Budget Estimates and Revised Estimates for 2024-25 and the proposed Budget Estimates for 2025-26 for certain schemes.

"The government has lost faith in these programmes announced with fanfare in the previous budget speeches. The government's capacity has significantly diminished. Examples are POSHAN, Jal Jeevan Mission, NSAP, PMGSY, Crop Insurance Scheme, Urea Subsidy and Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana," Chidambaram said.

He claimed that the railways has been shortchanged.

"If you examine the railways' specific heads of expenditure, you will find that the BE 2024-25 was Rs 2,06,961 crore while the RE 2024-25 is Rs 2,12,786 crore, and the BE 2025-26 is Rs 2,13,552 crore.

"The railways serves the overwhelming majority of the population. The increase of a paltry Rs 766 crore in 2025-26 will not even account for the inflation. The allocation will be less than last year's allocation," he said. PTI ASK ASK NSD NSD

Source: PTI