Reacting to the Interim Budget 2009-10 on Monday, the Bhartiya Janata Party claimed that the United Progressive Alliance government had failed to live up to the promises it made to the nation under its common minimum programme.
In a statement -- prepared by former finance ministers Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha, and former divestment minister Arun Shourie -- the BJP said that the interim budget was nothing short of fabrication of facts to mislead the people.
After Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee presented the interim budget in the Lok Sabha and said that the new government -- whichever comes to power after the elections -- would present the full budget, Jaswant Singh stated that the present government has remembered the word kisan, but forgotten jawan. "It is no longer Jai Jawan and Jai Kisan. It is unfortunate that the officers and jawans had to return their medals to the President because the UPA government had failed to implement one rank-one pay/pension scheme after the 6th Pay Commission report was made public," he said.
BJP leaders picked up seven points highlighted by Mukherjee that former finance minister P Chidambaram has spelled out in his first budget speech and which Mukherjee claimed had been fulfilled.
"According to them, though the UPA government has claimed that it was on a path of sustained growth of 7-8 per cent, it has left the economy in a state of significant slowdown.
"We have been warning all along that the UPA government was grossly mismanaging, both, the economy and governmental finances," Singh said. He added that there would be no growth in the four months after the Election Commission announces the dates for Lok Sabha and the moral code of conduct comes into force," he explained.
Arun Shourie said that the fiscal deficit could rise to unmanageable proportions crippling the nation's economy.