West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee slammed the Union Budget terming it as “completely visionless” that would result in price hikes.
#Budget2019 is completely visionless. The total vision is derailed,” Banerjee said in multiple posts on Twitter.
“On top of it, not only have they imposed cess but also special additional excise duty on petrol and diesel leading to price increase by nearly Rs 2.50/litre for petrol and Rs 2.30/litre for diesel” she said.
“As a result, price hikes will hit from transport to market to kitchens… This is election prize!!” she added.
Petrol and diesel will get dearer by Rs 2 per litre following a duty hike proposed in the budget.
Presenting her maiden full Union Budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed to increase Special Additional Excise duty and Road and Infrastructure Cess each by one rupee a litre on petrol and diesel.
Besides hike in petrol and diesel prices, 5% Basic Custom Duty was imposed on imported books.
The Basic Customs Duty was increased on cashew kernels, PVC, tiles, auto parts, marble slabs, optical fibre cable, CCTV camera etc.
The Trinamool Congress has dubbed the Union Budget as “faceless”, “baseless”, “actionless” and “directionless”, and said it has completely disappointed the people who had voted with great enthusiasm to bring back the BJP to power at the Centre.
“There is not a single line in the Budget on job creation. This Budget is baseless, faceless and actionless,” Trinamool secretary general and state education minister Partha Chatterjee told reporters.
Chatterjee described many of the Budget proposals as “impractical” and “hazy”.
Reiterating that people have been deprived, Chatterjee assailed the Budget for raising the price of petrol and diesel by proposing an additional special excise duty (SAED) of Re 1 and a road and infrastructure cess of Re 1 per litre on both transport fuel.
Read | Here are the key highlights of Union Budget 2019
This was the first full Union Budget of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government after returning to power for the second time.