FM spends large part of her Bud reply on Chidambaram's queries

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday spent almost half her speech in making a point by point rebuttal to Congress leader and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram, who raised doubts over government's vision of making India a USD 5 trillion economy in five years.

She spent almost 45 minutes of her 102-minute reply to the debate on the union budget in the Rajya Sabha to the points raised by the former finance minister.

Sitharaman alleged that if the country's economy would double every five years by itself, as claimed by Chidambaram, then why during the UPA government no attention was given to the economy and scandals kept happening.

The minister said she would love to learn a lot of lessons from every former finance minister and highlighted that some shortcomings during Chidambaram's time were handled by this government.

These included curbing high inflation, introducing corrective measures pertaining to voluntary disclosure of income scheme and sale of participatory notes abroad, she said.

Sitharaman said the targets set by her government in this regard were backed with a plan and were totally realistic and achievable, without cutting down on social sector spending.

Taking on Chidambaram for his comment that even money lenders can tell that economy will automatically double every five years by a mere mathematical calculation, she said, "If that is indeed the case, why are all of us here? Why should there be a government."
The finance minister said Chidambaram had quoted a lot of figures and they are attractive. "They are also captivating to say that wow, this ihas put the government on the mat. This is experience speaking. Can I take him lightly, not at all."
Referring to Chidambaram, she said he had "slighted, mocked, ridiculed" the NDA government
"In order to earn some brownie points, the then finance minister for containing fiscal deficit within the budgeted 4.8 per cent of the GDP left a huge burden of unpaid bills on the next government which was our government in