Union Budget 2021: Shiv Sena calls it a 'Dreamy Budget', meant for poll-bound states

In an editorial in its mouthpiece "Saamana", the Shiv Sena on Tuesday has called the Union Budget 2021 a 'Dreamy Budget' and alleged that it looked more like a budget for the election-bound States, including West Bengal where Assembly polls are scheduled to be held this year. The government is a master at showing dreams and selling them and this time again Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has made a public tour of dreams with a "digital horse", Shiv Sena said.

It said that the Budget 2021 was more focused on poll-bound states -- Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal -- which have received a massive infrastructure boost by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Shiv Sena slammed Sitharaman for announcing road infrastructure projects only for states going to elections and said that the budget is being used as a weapon to woo votes.

"How appropriate is the use of 'budget' as a weapon to win elections? The Central Government, which distributed a lot of projects to these poll-bounded states, ignored Maharashtra, which contributed most to the country's cash chest," Shiv Sena attacked the Central Government for ignoring Maharashtra in this Budget and also showing vindictive attitude towards the state. Sitaraman is the finance minister of the entire country not of some states, it said, adding that the budget is unjust to non-election-bound States.

Except for the provision made for the Nagpur and Nashik metro projects, nothing was received from the budget in parts of Mumbai and Maharashtra. Why this discrimination? The country's finance department should consider the whole country, it said. Clamming that there was nothing in the budget for pandemic hit industries, Shiv Sena said, "Due to COVID-19 thousands of industries suffered losses, many people lost their jobs, unemployment increased but during the budget Finance Minister did not say anything on this matter."

Editorial in the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Samana said, How will the industries recover, how will people get their jobs back, Finance Minister said nothing about it, The public has nothing to do with heavy financial terms it said.

The common man is concerned about what comes into their pockets and with the recent budget, nothing has come into the pocket of the public, it is a reality, it claimed. Apart from the old-fashioned bubbles like self-sufficient India, startups, and new-found tricks of words like infrastructure, agricultural development, the general public gets nothing in this budget, it said.

Shiv Sena lambasted at Central government for showing dreams to the public and said that the 'paper horses' of the budget will only become 'digital horses', saying that it is a case where there is not a single drop of water in the well and yet one had promised to give plenty of water to the people." (ANI)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)