The Opposition Congress on Thursday said that there was nothing in the Interim Budget 2024 except for self-praise phrases and called it “a mere administrative exercise” to ensure that the government of India has the requisite funds to carry on its normal business until new government is formed.

Karti Chidambaram, the Congress MP and son of former finance minister P Chidambram, said that “except for making their obligatory self-congratulatory, self-praise phrases, nothing else is there and nothing should have been there, and rightly so. Nothing is there.”

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Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor criticised the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for “one of the shortest speeches on record in the Budget” and said the budget lacked in willingness to address the specific problems of the economy.

“It was one of the shortest speeches on record in the Budget. Not very much came out of it. As usual a lot of rhetorical language, very little concrete on implementation…She talked about foreign investment without acknowledging that that investment has come down significantly. She talked about a number of things which are couched in vague language like ‘confidence’ and ‘hope’ and so on. But when it comes to hard figures, very few figures available…This is going to be a very disappointing speech in terms of being couched entirely in generalities and without enough substance nor any willingness to address the specific problems of the economy…,” Tharoor said.

Former Union Minister Manish Tewari said that he was worried by the fact that there is a budget deficit of Rs 18 lakh crores.

“It is a ‘vote-on-account’ which has only one purpose to keep the government solvent for the first quarter of the current fiscal year. What’s worrying is that there is a budget deficit of Rs 18 lakh crores. This means that the government is borrowing for its expenditure. This number is only going to increase next year,” said Tewari.

There remarks came shortly after Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the last Budget of her government ahead of the upcoming polls.

In the Budget, she several new schemes and intiatives by the government to boost overall economic growth and development in the country.

“Our government will launch a scheme to help deserving sections of middle class to buy or build their own houses,” she said.

Sitharaman said that key rail infrastructure projects including Metro Rail and Namo Bharat will be expanded to more cities and around 40,000 rail bogies will be converted to Vande Bharat coaches.

She didn’t propose any changes in the taxation and direct and indirect taxes including import duties remained unchanged. Click here to read more about the Interim Budget 2024