Himachal Pradesh’s Opposition parties, the Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), on Monday criticised the Union Budget 2021-22 and said the interests of the state have been ignored as it focused only on poll-bound states of the country.

HP Congress chief Kuldeep Singh Rathore said the Union Budget presented by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had focused only on poll bound states to gain political mileage in the upcoming assembly elections.

“BJP national chief J P Nadda and Union Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur belong to Himachal Pradesh but the budget doesn’t have any new scheme for the state which is quite unfortunate. In the previous budget, there was mention of expansion of rail network and national highways in the state but there is no mention of any such scheme in this year’s budget,” he added.

Rathore added the state had been burdened with increased debt and almost all sectors as tourism and small industries had been badly affected but no financial package or relief had been affected by the Union government to the state. “Union government has only come up with a web of statistics to hide its failures and the budget would only lead to price rise and unemployment in the country,” he added.

CPM State Secretariat member Sanjay Chauhan said this budget was a big push to neo-liberal policies of the BJPled Central government. “GDP growth is still negative 7.5 percent and there is no possibility of recovery.

Due to neo-liberal economic policies being implemented by the BJP government since 2014, there has been an increase in unemployment, agricultural crisis and fall in growth rate.

In the present budget, disinvestment of PSUs like GAIL, ONGC, NHAI, railway, insurance, banking sectors means the government is trying to meet the economic crisis by selling the public sector to meet its day to day expenses,” he added.

He said there was no reference of MNREGA in the budget and even the agriculture sector was totally ignored.

“Farmers are asking to make MSP legal but the government is totally ignoring it. Further, Agriculture cess on petrol and diesel will increase inflation more and put additional burden on people.

This budget will make rich richer and poor poorer,” he added.