Kolkata: Amit Mitra, the principal chief adviser to CM Mamata Banerjee, on Saturday termed the Union Budget placed by Nirmala Sitharaman “irresponsible”.
“After the Budget announcements, the govt had to amend a lot of its proposals. That is why I find it irresponsible,” he said. Mitra added that the “Budget had completely failed to address the problem of economy and common people”.
“It has not addressed the problem of unemployment. It has cheated people,” he added.
Pointing to the “somersault’ on long-term capital gains (LTCG) tax and indexation benefits, Mitra said: “The Union finance minister said whatever the govt is doing, it is for a simplified tax regime. Then why did the govt do a somersault within 72 hours or within a week” he asked.
Mitra alleged that the govt had left the responsibility of generating employment completely on the private sector. “They said 500 companies will take 2 lakh interns. That means each company will take 4,000 interns every year. This is absurd. I have spoken to some of these companies. They said it is absurd to absorb 4,000 interns every year. It looks like another Agniveer scheme,” he said.
“Overall consumption growth is also the lowest in two decades. Household savings have dropped. As far as the information in the Budget, LPG subsidy and food subsidy have also gone down. LPG subsidy has gone down by 2.6% and food subsidy by 3.4%,” Mitra said.
“For regular workers, average monthly income went down from Rs 12,100 in 2012 to Rs 10,900 in 2022. For the self-employed, monthly income fell from Rs 7,017 to Rs 6,840 during the same time,” he added.