No special favours given to any state: FM

New Delhi: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday countered Opposition attack on the Union Budget 2024 and termed their claims as "misleading." The Opposition INDIA bloc has repeatedly called the Centre biased and said that the many states have been ignored in the Budget. Sitharaman, however, said that no special favours have been given to any state and clarified that it is not possible to name all the states in the Budget.

The Opposition had objected to the allocation to Bihar and Andhra Pradesh in the Union Budget claiming that special favours were done as Nitish Kumar's JD(U) and N Chandrababu Naidu's TDP extended support to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Lok Sabha elections 2024 to form government at the Centre. Picking out previous budgets, Sitharaman said, "2004-05 Budget did not take name of 17 states. I would like to ask UPA government members, did money not go to those 17 states. Did they stop it? If they did, they have every business to ask this. When it is them everything's alright but not for anybody else. 18 states were not named in 2005-06, 13 states in 2006-07, 13 states were not named in 2008-09, 26 were not named in 2009-10 which means only 2 were named."

The FM said, "I would like to thank every member of the House who has spoken and taken interest in the Budget which has been presented here. I would like to thank the people of the country for giving this Govt headed by PM Modi, a historic third consecutive term in office.

It reaffirms the faith the people have and the commitment with which the Prime Minister is leading the country and therefore building stability and coming up with people-centric policies. We shall all work together to build a Viksit Bharat by 2047...”

Sitharaman said, “We have provided substantial financial support of Rs 17,000 crore in the Union Budget of UT Jammu and Kashmir this year. It includes Rs 12,000 crore towards financing the cost of Jammu and Kashmir Police. That’s the burden we want to take on our shoulders, so that Jammu and Kashmir has more flexibility to spend money on development activities.”

On Monday, LoP Rahul Gandhi tore into the Centre over the Budget 2024, calling it a “Chakravyuh” which has trapped India’s youth, women, farmers and MSMEs. In his speech, Gandhi drew a reference to the Mahabharat legend where Abhimanyu was killed in a chakravyuh, in which he was trapped and said that it was also known as a padmavyuh (lotus, the symbol of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).