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NEW DELHI: Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP and former Union Minister, on Friday called Modi Government’s Interim Budget a pack of lies.
There are several figures that Finance Minister Piyush Goyal cites during his Budget speech, which were blatant inaccuracies or exaggerations.
“I am not so sure you should be granting them a certificate of good housekeeping quite so easily,” Tharoor told ETNOW.
Tharoor said the income-tax exemption and higher standard deduction is good for the middle class, but said the government has been busy dipping its hand into the pockets of the middle class through other taxes.
“In some way, they are only giving back to the middle class what they have been unjustly taking from it,” Tharoor said.
The minimum income guarantee for farmers actually suffers from the crippling reality, he said, noting that the proposed amount of Rs 6,000 a year is just Rs 500 a month.
It will not make the slightest difference to the lives of anybody, he said.
“Rs 500 a month is not going to be meaningful income support.
What the Congress president announced would be a minimum income guarantee for all the poor, something that people can actually live on.
You cannot live on Rs 500 a month.
We are talking about a larger sum of money.
We are talking about extending it to landless farmers as well, as the urban poor, who are excluded from Mr Modi’s scheme,” Tharoor said.
He compared the announced scheme with the minimum income guarantee proposed for the poor by the Congress Party if it wins power in the 2019 general elections.
