The editorial also said that the budget had nothing for pandemic-hit industries.
The Shiv Sena today slammed Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Union Budget 2021 for ignoring Maharashtra and focusing only on poll-bound states. It likened the exercise to her making a "public tour of dreams" riding a "digital horse".
An editorial in the Sena's mouthpiece "Saamna" today said Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal had received a massive infrastructure boost from Ms Sitharaman. These states are scheduled to go to polls in a few months to elect new legislative assemblies.
"How appropriate is the use of the budget as a weapon to win elections? The Central government, which distributed a lot of projects to these poll-bounded states, ignored Maharashtra, which contributed most to the country's cash chest," the editorial said.
It also alleged that the budget had shown a vindictive attitude towards the state. Sitharaman is the finance minister of the entire country not of only some states, it said.
"Except for the provision made for the Nagpur and Nashik Metro projects, Mumbai and Maharashtra received nothing," it said. "Why this discrimination? The country's finance department should consider the whole country."
The editorial also said that the budget had nothing for pandemic-hit industries: "Due to Covid-19 thousands of industries suffered losses, many people lost their jobs, unemployment increased. But the Finance Minister did not say anything on this matter."
The common people, it said, were concerned with what comes into their pockets. Apart from "old-fashioned bubbles" like "self-sufficient India" and "startups" and some newfound "trick words" like "infrastructure and agricultural development," the general public got nothing in this budget, an ANI report said.
Shiv Sena, according to the report, said the "paper horses" of the budget will only become "digital horses". It was a case where there is not a single drop of water in the well and yet one had promised to give plenty of water to the people, the report said.