View from the gallery: When the PM crossed over to the other side

When Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi got a note within the first 10 minutes of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget speech, he thought a bit. Then he conferred briefly with his colleague, minister of state, Arjun Meghwal. 

More whispered consultations with Bharatiya Janata Party whip in the Lok Sabha, Rakesh Singh followed. Singh scurried to clusters of BJP MPs sitting in the middle of the Treasury benches. What it was all about was clear a few minutes later when the volume of applause from the Treasury benches suddenly increased. Unaccountably, the biggest applause was reserved for the finance minister’s announcement that a new task force that will look at ways to build domestic capacity and also to serve the global demand in the animation, visual effects, gaming and comics (AVGC) sector. The announcement of a tax on cryptocurrency also elicited loud applause although many, like Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MP Ritesh Pandey (Ambedkarnagar), who has been educated at Welhams and later the European Business School, London, looked disappointed and met the announcement with a crestfallen smile.

The finance minister was a model of tranquility and calm while presenting the Budget, unlike past occasions, and received warm accolades from both Home Minister Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Her decision to read a truncated version of a Mahabharat verse met with sarcastic remarks from Dayanidhi Maran (Chennai Central), commenting the Budget was for Hindi and UP. Similar comments were made when Sitharaman announced facilities for GIFT City, that the Budget was for Gujarat, not India. Interestingly, the finance minister demonstrated she was “woke” when she referred consistently to the assessee as “she”: “There will be a trust reposed in the taxpayers that will enable the assessee herself to declare the income that she may have missed out earlier while filing her return…”. 

But a surprise was in store after she had read the speech. Rather than plunge into the gaggle of his own colleagues who were angling to somehow shake him by the hand, the PM, for the first time since 2014, crossed over to the other side to meet Opposition MPs. “Kya Adhir da…tabiyat theek hai na?” he asked the Leader of the Opposition, Adhir Ranjan Choudhury (Berhampore), who later told Business Standard that the PM would sometimes cross over to the Opposition before the beginning of a session but this was the first time he’d done it after a Budget. 

The PM asked Farooq Abdullah (Srinagar) (who was kept in long detention by the central government two years ago) whether he was okay. Abdullah just nodded and turned away. He asked DMK leader A Raja (Nilgiris) a question. CPI M leader N Premachandran (Kollam) repeated a complaint he had made at the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) the previous day — that hard copies of the Budget had not been given to MPs. “But this is so much easier,” the PM replied in English jovially. He clapped Trinamool Congress leader Saugata Roy (Dum Dum) on the shoulder, advising him to look after himself. Congress President Sonia Gandhi did not attend and Rahul Gandhi, who read the Budget speech on a tablet, left the House before it was completed. It is possible that the PM may not have been as cordial if Gandhi had been present.

The colour of Budget day 2022 was ochre, with the palette of the saris worn by the women MPs ranging from peach to sienna. The finance minister wore brown and pink, to present the shortest budget speech she’s ever made.