By TCN News,
New Delhi: E. Ahamed, Member of Parliament and President of Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) has criticized NDA government’s third budget presented today and said it has ignored the welfare of the minority community.
Following is the reaction to the budget expressed by E Ahamed:
1. The budget is totally disappointed the people particularly the common man though the falling of international price of crude oil made the task easy for the government.
2. The three challenges mentioned by the Finance Minister in his budget speech viz., maintaining micro economic stability, strengthening domestic demand and accelerating pace of economic reforms. But, unfortunately, the Finance Minister did not spell out details to meet these challenges.
3. The nine pillars on which the budget proposals rest are hollow. It is a lackluster budget heavily biased towards the business class.
4. The Finance Minister has failed to mention incurring of trade deficit continuously for the last 9 months.
5. So far the Ministry of Minority Affairs is concerned; there is a reduction in the Central Plan Outlay. In Revised Estimates 2015-16 the provision was 3713 cores but the Budget 2016-17 has reduced it to 2797 crores whereas the actual expenditure for 2014-15 was 3069 crores. This shows that the present government has ignored the welfare of the minority community.
For example, the provision made under pre-matric scholarship in 2015-16 was 1040 crores and it has reduced to 931 crores in 2016-17 which means a reduction of 109 crores. Under post-matric scholarship scheme also there is a reduction of 30 crores whereas provision under merit-cum-means based scholarship, free coaching and allied scheme and grants in aid to Moulana Azad Education Foundation, the provisions have been capped at last year’s budget level. If you consider inflation, there is no real increase under these heads.
6. The budget speaks about doubling the income of farmers in 5 years but fails to spell out concrete measures to achieve this. Already the agriculture sector is in doldrums and there is a need to release a white paper on agriculture sector.
7. The budget is regressive so far tax proposals are concerned. There is a loss in the direct taxes whereas there is a gain in the indirect taxes. It shows that the burden on common man has increased and corporate sector has been benefited. The salaried class is also disappointed.