People are wholeheartedly welcoming this budget, Kiren Rijiju said
Union Minister Kiren Rijiju has called the Union Budget 2025 the "strongest ever foundation laid for Viksit Bharat (developed India) by 2047". He told NDTV the budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today was for everyone, whether middle class, business community, farmers, people living in border areas, the northeast region, coastal areas, etc.
"People are wholeheartedly welcoming this budget," Mr Rijiju, Parliamentary Affairs Minister, told NDTV.
"While the tax relief for the middle class is massive, it's beyond anybody's imagination that such a jump in tax relief can be given by the government in a single stroke of one budget. This is of course one of the highlights, but if you go beyond, deeper into the budget, then you could see that this budget is the strongest ever foundation laid for Viksit Bharat by 2047," he said.
Mr Rijiju said the Union Budget 2025 is so realistic that no matter whatever the size of the budget, if one spends, then one is going to get more.
"So spending of the budgetary allocation has been the focus of the Prime Minister," he added.
Considering experiences from the past which show funds allocated for different purposes had a tendency not to cross more than 60 per cent in expenditure, did the budget address expenditure requirements of development in artificial intelligence, startups, etc?
Mr Rijiju said Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a lot of attention to the expenditure of the budgetary allocation.
"Otherwise, in the past, we have seen that allocations and announcements were made, but spending was very poor. PM Modi's track record is very clear, that whatever you allocate, you spend it," the Union Minister told NDTV.
"Besides the US and China, globally it is acknowledged that India is coming up as the third major force in AI and the tech sector... With the kind of ecosystem which we have created, it's not going to take a long time for India to match them or to be in that league. It's heartening to see the numbers of startups over the years in India. It is quite a phenomenon," Mr Rijiju.
The budget session of parliament, which began on Friday, will be conducted in two phases - the first will end on February 13, while the second phase will begin on March 10 and end on April 4.
