Dismissing the Interim Budget 2019 announcements made by Finance Minister Piyush Goyal, BJP’s Subramanian Swamy said on Friday, 1 February, that they were “unstructured collection of happy sounding policies.”
Speaking to the BloombergQuint, Swamy said that the proposals are not bound together by objectives, priority and strategy. He, however, said that this Budget is a lot more acceptable than the previous four presented by the Narendra Modi-led government.
On full income tax rebate for those earning up to Rs 5 lakh, Swamy said that the government should have abolished income tax altogether as people are not concerned about the amount of tax one pays.
Moreover, he was not impressed by the Rs 6,000 direct income transfers promised to small farmers. “40 percent of our farmers are tenant farmers and they won’t come in the list. This is all bureaucratic increase,” Swamy said.
He further said that India is heading towards a debt trap in a couple of years because for every rupee that the country earns, it is paying 98 paise as interest on previous loans.
The BJP leader, however, maintained that voters will not be affected by poor economics as the NDA government had been voted in on emotional issues such as building Ram temple, fighting corruption and teaching Pakistan a lesson.
“We will be routed if we do not build the Ram temple before elections.”Subramanian Swamy, BJP MP
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