Don't expect anything but 'platitude' in General Budget: Congress

Citing the condition of India's economy, the Congress Party on Monday said that nothing except 'platitude' should be expected from the General Budget 2016-2017.

"The way our economy is, everybody knows that except for platitude, nothing is going to happen in this budget. Rather than making wild announcements on the radio, the Prime Minister should give a direction to the economic policy to see how we can come out of the mess that his own government has created," Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit told ANI.

Taking a jibe at the Prime Minister Narendra for unnecessarily 'dramatising' everything, Dikshit said "The Budget comes every year, because it establishes the economic and financial policy of the government for the coming financial year."

"People look up to it because they want to see any relief they would get from the government which is in power," he added.

Meanwhile another Congress leader Pramod Tiwary slammed the government for favouring the industrialists by ignoring the common man of the country.

"It been almost two year of the Modi government, and if we take a close look at each of this government's budgets, they are far from what they promised. It portrays the government as a usurer who only takes the money from the common man and gives them nothing. It gives money handful of industrialists but forgets the debt ridden farmers and common man of this country," Tiwary told ANI.

Ahead of the announcement of the 2016 Annual Budget today, Minister of State (MoS) for Finance Jayant Sinha said, that under the guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi a wholesome Budget had been formed, keeping the suggestions of everyone in mind.

"The Prime Minister has given us the guidance that when faced with a test, we must be fully prepared and rest. At 11:00 clock you will see what the Budget has to offer. We have really worked hard for this and prepared a lot. Under the guidance of the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister, we have been working in the service of the people," Sinha told the media here.

Meanwhile, the Finance Minister has a herculean task of balancing the needs of agriculture as well as the industry as the Modi-Government seeks to garner resources to boost public spending for higher growth amid global headwinds.

Rising rural distress because of back-to-back droughts has put considerable pressure on the Finance Minister to spend more on social schemes, while at the same time he has to win back foreign investors craving for faster reforms.