FM Nirmala Sitharaman Lashes Out On Opposition For Calling Budget ‘Biased’

Hitting back at opposition FM Nirmala Sitharaman says that the bias remark for the latest budget is ‘outrageous allegation’.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman vehemently refuted the Opposition’s accusation that the Union Budget is “politically biased” in favor of the non-NDA states, emphasizing that each state receives a same share of dedicated funding.

“If any state is not named in the Budget speech, this doesn’t mean that they have been left out,” the Finance Minister said in Rajya Sabha.

She also took aim at the opposition parties, claiming that Congress and other parties had made a conscious effort to create the impression that non-NDA-ruled states were receiving nothing.

“I would challenge the Congress party, in each of their budget speeches, have they named every state of this country. This is an outrageous allegation,” Sitharaman said.

Notably, the leaders of the INDIA group characterized the Budget as discriminatory against non-NDA states and anti-people. Making reference to the generous allocations made to Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, they asserted that the Budget was not a “BJP document” and that it needed to accommodate all states.

FM Sitharaman refuted the Opposition’s accusations of discrimination by pointing to Maharashtra as an example in response to these assertions.

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“The cabinet, under the leadership of PM Modi, took the decision to set up a very big port in Vadhavan in Maharashtra. Did Maharashtra get ignored because I did not mention the name? Rs 76,000 crore has been announced for the project,” she said.

“If the speech does not mention a particular state, does it mean that the schemes and programmes of government don’t extend to these states?” she asked.

She accused opposition of deliberately misleading the opposition.