Jaipur : Former Chief Minister of Rajasthan and senior Congress leader Ashok Gehlot has termed the budget presented in Parliament by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman as directionless and said that Rajasthan has only got disappointment from this. Gehlot said this in his reaction to the Union Budget on Tuesday. He said that it seemed as if for political reasons the central government has handed over the entire country’s budget only to Andhra Pradesh and Bihar.
He said that geographically and socially our Rajasthan needed a special package but the name of Rajasthan did not even come up in the entire budget speech, whereas during the last assembly elections no speech of the Prime Minister ended without the misleading claim of double development from the so-called double engine government. Gehlot said, “We had hoped that the Central Government would give the status of national project to the Eastern Rajasthan Canal Project (ERCP) in this budget and special funds would be provided for ERCP, but the Central Government has played with the interests of Rajasthan by not making any announcement even on ERCP.
He further said that earlier the BJP government had promised two crore jobs per year, but now the budget has announced one crore internships in five years and a salary of Rs 5000 per month. Former CM Gehlot said that no measures have been taken in this budget to control inflation. Neither any tax on petrol and diesel has been reduced nor cooking gas has been made cheaper. In Rajasthan, our government provided gas cylinders for Rs 500. When the state of Rajasthan can do this, then why can’t the central government do so. He said that after reading the entire budget speech, the public is disappointed. Such a directionless budget is unlikely to be successful in bringing the country’s economy back on track.
