“Budget adds fuel to fire”

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday accused Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee of adding fuel to the fire by rolling back the duty cuts on petroleum products. “The nation was hoping for a remedy against back-breaking prices. Instead, people have been given a budget that will further push up prices,” said BJP leader Yashwant Sinha in the party’s critique of the budget.

Instead of meeting the challenge posed by runaway inflation, the Minister has buckled under it. Now inflation and price rise cannot be contained, Mr. Sinha said, briefing the media after the budget was presented.

Justifying the Opposition walkout, he said Mr. Mukherjee violated the limits of tolerance of the masses with his announcements on fuel pricing. This time the government has given up the distinction between diesel and petroleum while tweaking prices. It has used the tax route to alter the price structure, and kept the difference in the hike of petrol and diesel at only nine paise, the former Union Finance Minister said.

Taking a dig at Mr. Mukherjee’s claim that “this budget belongs to the aam aadmi,” he said this was not reflected in the proposals. No attempt has been made to tackle urban unemployment and the Rs. 1,000 crore increase in the allocation for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was not even sufficient to take care of the rate of inflation. As for the agricultural sector, the allocations were too little to make any impact on the agrarian crisis.
Rationale questioned

Mr. Sinha has also questioned the rationale in the proposal to set up a ‘Coal Regulatory Authority.’ Does this mean that the government plans to open the coal sector to private players, he asked. If this were the case, then the government should come clean on it and admit that it wants to amend the Coal Mines (Nationalisation) Act.

In a separate statement, the former BJP president, Rajnath Singh, said: “The budget has not only disappointed the people but also dealt a body blow to the expectations of some announcement of concrete measures from the government to counter the mounting inflationary pressures on our economy.”