Welfare Party of India called union budget an attempt to perplex the nation and not enough to sail it through the prevailing economic crises.
National President of Welfare Party of India Dr Ilyas expressed dissatisfaction with the union budget 2021-22 and said people of the nation were hit hard by the pandemic and consequent lockdown but find no relief in this budget.
He said ours is a consumer driven economy and will not improve unless demand is revived, with the purchasing power in the hands of the people. He said this budget has nothing to boost the consumer’s spending or to create jobs.
Dr Ilyas said during such unprecedented economic deterioration one-time cess on the super-rich or any such corrective measure was the need of the hour but this budget saw no change in the taxation laws to reboot the economy.
Dr Ilyas said in this budget once again fudging of statistics and economic figures were seen and the allocation of health showed a big figure of Rs 223, 846 crores a breathtaking “rise” from that of the current year of Rs 94,452 crore, misleading the people as it includes a one-time cost of vaccination of Rs 35,000 crore and the Finance Commission grants amounting to Rs 49,214 crore and also includes the allocations to the Department of Water and Sanitation.
Dr Ilyas pointed out that with impending Chinese aggression and concerns regarding national security, the Budget for Defence allocation was not hiked in 2021-22 but remained Rs 3,47,088 crore, almost the same as the Rs 3,43,822 crore in the current year which is shocking.
Dr Ilyas pointed out that the central government has given allocation in budget to states of West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Kerala as these states are going to elections and called it political signalling.
Dr Ilyas pointed out that the budget resonates around to give grand social schemes but without a proper road map for implementation they are nothing but jumlas.
Dr Ilyas said a budget should be devised by the government by articulating the general concerns of the people but no such relief was seen for the common man, no tax relief for the salaried class, nothing for migrant workers and MGNREGA was also not mentioned.
Dr Ilyas pointed out that with the Farmer’s agitation there were expectations for farmers in this budget but overall budgetary allocation to agriculture was down by 8% from last year and there was no major announcement of any flagship schemes for the farmers, MSP was not extended to all the crops.
Dr Ilyas strongly criticised the government which is on a selling spree as this budget focused on disinvestment and privatisation, announcing, and disinvestment of two PSU banks and PSU companies LIC IPO, BPCL, CONCOR, Pawan Hans and Air India and said this will not help in rebalancing the economy.
Dr Ilyas pointed out that the government recently introduced the New Education Policy instead of hiking the education budget it was slashed by 6 per cent from Rs 99,311 crore in 2020-21 to Rs 93,224 crore.
