Veteran actor and TMC leader Shatrughan Sinha on Wednesday criticized the Narendra Modi-led government for not doing much for the middle class people of the society and claimed that the Budget 2023-24 presented in Parliament by the Finance Minister nirmala sitharaman The main focus was on ‘Hum Do Hamare Do’.
Talking to news agency ANI, Sinha said, ‘The budget was presented keeping in mind the upcoming Lok Sabha elections and there was nothing special for the middle class people. Looking at the budget, it seems as if it is made for special care of ‘Hum Do Hamare Do’ as is evident from the very low highest slab for income tax payers. People understand very well for whom they have done this.”
He also said that the topics of diesel, petrol and farmers were barely touched upon in the budget speech.
It was expected that many prisoners awaiting bail due to lack of sufficient bail amount and other reasons during Amritkal would be released, but their files are still lying incomplete, including one of Sidhu. [Former Punjab Congress Chief Navjot Singh Sidhu], Still a lot more needs to be done so it needs to be studied thoroughly.
In the Modi government’s last full budget before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Sitharaman unveiled tax exemptions and savings schemes to woo the middle class, women and pensioners, and announced massive spending on housing and infrastructure, as She was walking the tightrope between living and being fiscally prudent. To meet the expectations of the public.
Under the new tax regime, the personal income tax exemption limit has been raised from the previous Rs 5 lakh to Rs 7 lakh from the financial year beginning April 1. Tax slabs have been reduced from seven to five. Also, the maximum income tax rate has been brought down from 42.7 per cent to around 39 per cent after reducing the maximum surcharge from 37 per cent to 25 per cent.
‘Tax the rich, build infrastructure’
Meanwhile, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury hit out at the Center demanding that the super-rich be taxed and youth be provided employment on the basis of investment in infrastructure. In a video interview with PTI, he alleged that the budget has failed to address inflation, unemployment, price rise and recession.
“This could be done if you were willing to tax the rich, and especially the rich, who made windfall gains. About 14.5 percent of the wealth generated in the last two years was held by the one percent of Indian people, who are the richest. Tax them,” Yechury said.
He said that “instead of giving concessions to the rich”, the government should invest in infrastructure and create crores of new jobs for the spending youth.
“Instead more concessions were given to the rich and even reduced the highest tax bracket. The Finance Minister himself announced that these tax concessions amount to Rs 35,000 crore in terms of revenue collection for the coming year . So in this way the economy is contracting. It is good that some relief has been given to the salaried class but in the face of inflation and reduction in allocation of social services every family and every individual has to spend more. Hence the tax Whatever relief has been achieved in terms of income has been more than offset by the increase in prices and reduction in expenditure on public services, including health and education.”
‘harsh’ budget
Attacking the government, the Congress on Wednesday said its ‘Mitra Kaal’ budget has betrayed the expectations of a vast majority of Indians, while also showing how far the Center is from the people and their concerns about livelihood .
Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge termed the Union Budget for 2023-24 as “big on announcements and short on delivery” as he accused the BJP government of making life difficult for the common man.
During a press conference at the AICC headquarters in Delhi, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram termed the budget as “disgusting” and said that Sitharaman did not mention the words unemployment, poverty, inequality or equity anywhere in her budget speech.
He insisted that no tax has been reduced except for a small number of people who have opted for the new tax regime. “No indirect tax has been reduced. There has been no reduction in the draconian and irrational GST rates. There has been no reduction in the prices of petrol, diesel, cement, fertilizers etc. There has been no cut in several surcharges and cesses, which are anyway not shared with the state governments,” Chidambaram said.
“The Government is also determined to push the ‘new’ tax regime, for which there are few takers for a number of reasons. Further, making the new tax regime the default option is completely unfair and ordinary taxpayers will be deprived of what they were getting under the old regime. Who will deny me the modest social security, has betrayed the expectations of the vast majority of the public.
(With inputs from PTI)
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