BJP Leader of Opposition (LoP) and former Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur hailed the interim budget of the central government that will be completing 10 years under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Terming the budget growth oriented, he said that India has progressed in every field.

“With India’s progress, India’s reputation has stood out with a distinct identity on the world map,” he said while addressing media persons here on Thursday.

He said that be it Article 370 or the grand temple built at the birthplace of Lord Ram, poor welfare schemes, infrastructure and international policy, India has done excellent work in every field under the leadership of Modi.

“During the last 10-year tenure the work of bringing 25 crore people living below the poverty line out of the poverty line was successfully achieved,” he claimed, adding that providing free food grains to 80 crore people of India has been a huge task done during this period.

Under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, more than 3 crore houses have been constructed and the target set for the next five years is to give 2 crore houses to poor people, he added.

Great work has been done in the GST collection and today the GST collection has doubled, said Thakur.

“Through the scheme of green energy and rooftop solar installation, 1 crore houses will get 300 units of free electricity in the coming time. This is a very important goal which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is pursuing,” he said.

PM Modi had set an aim to encourage self-help groups and 2 crore women in villages across the country are targeted to become ‘Lakhpati Didis’, however in today’s interim budget it has been promised to expand it to 3 crore , he said.

Ayushman Bharat, a very important scheme that takes care of the health of the poor, will be expanded and many categories of people like Anganwadi workers, Anganwadi assistants and Asha workers will be benefited under this scheme, he added.

“Modi has stated that India has jumped from 10th economy to 5th economy today and by 2029 it will become the third largest economy in the world,” said Thakur.

Meanwhile, state BJP President Rajeev Bindal praised the budget and said that India’s economy has strengthened in the last 10 years and witnessed growth at the rate of 7 percent per annum, which had never happened before.

He said that last year there has been an increase of Rs 18.06 lakh crore in infrastructure development, which is much more than the hopes and expectations.

“The budget is pro-poor as a provision has been made to build 2 crore new pucca houses. This budget aims to enrich the farmers and Kisan Samman Nidhi will be given to 11.08 crore farmers.

Under the Prime Minister Kisan Samman Nidhi, Rs 2.8 lakh crore has been distributed to farmers through DBT.

The BJP President said that a corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore has been kept for employment generation and research work for the youth, which will act as the backbone for employment generation.

In the budget of 2024-25, double the provision has been made for infrastructure development as compared to last year.