‘A revolutionary budget for middle class, farmers’

Hailing the interim budget 2019-20 as revolutionary union minister of road transport and highways Nitin

Gadkari in an exclusive chat with Anisha Dutta said the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government’s last budget of its tenure is the first budget by any government for India’s poor.

Edited excerpts:

Income tax rebate for the middle class, pension scheme for informal sector workers, and income support for the farmers are the big takeaways from the budget. How do you see this impacting BJP’s chances in the run up to the general elections?

This is the first time in the history of the country where the budget is dedicated to the poor. Poor, labourers, farmers, middle class, lower middle class and upper middle class, everyone will benefit from this budget. According to me at least 400-500 million people will directly benefit from it. I don’t think we should relate this budget with politics. It is a budget for development of the country and presenting the budget is the ruling party’s responsibility; what to present is also the government’s right. Keeping the development of the country in mind, Piyush Goyal has presented a fantastic budget.

These sops for middle class and farmers in the interim budget will be seen as aimed at the elections.

This is a revolutionary budget for the middle class and farmers. And we have announced the budget keeping in mind the vision for development of a New India. For farmers with less than 2 hectares land, ie 5 acres we will directly transfer ₹6,000 in their accounts , so this is a huge relief for them. For labourers we announced the pension scheme of ₹3,000 minimum pension which will provide a big relief. It also benefits middle class and upper middle class, and the service class including; doctors, professors or journalists who will get a respite in income tax.

The Congress has alleged that government sources leaked key points of the budget to the media calling it a breach of secrecy. They have also called it a political budget

Congress calling it a political budget is just a case of sour grapes. We don’t take them seriously, you should also not. The budget is in the interest of the country. It is the government’s constitutional right to decide whom to provide benefits to in the budget.

The finance minster did not mention the issue of unemployment in the economy; how will you take care of it?

When the GDP is increasing, it will create more employment . We are the fastest growing economy and we are expecting a huge increase in jobs.

How much is the transport ministry expecting to get in the budgetary allocation?

I am expecting to get ₹85,000 crore in budgetary allocation (the ministry received ₹83,000) for the transport ministry and I am certain we will get that much. I am very happy that the finance minister had specifically mentioned we are the highest developing country in the highways sector. The kind of progress we are doing with the construction of expressways, airports, , sea ports and water transport ports is unparalleled.

In the 2030 vision, the finance minister envisioned India will be a leader in electric vehicles and energy storage. Can you meet that target?

For vision 2030, I am certain India will be the leader for electric vehicles; in fact I am certain we will achieve it even before that.

The pace at which we are working towards it in my ministry is great. With new models we will get more public and private investment and soon the scenario will change.