How Union Budget has shattered BJP's claims over stability of NDA govt

Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have spent the past month belligerently asserting the stability and strength of his government, which returned to power for a third consecutive term earlier this month. On Tuesday (July 23), all it took to break that mirage was the 85-minute long budget speech by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Lok Sabha.

Sitharaman became the first finance minister of the country to present seven consecutive Union Budgets, but her shortest yet cast a long shadow on Modi and the BJP’s claims over the stability of the NDA regime. The singular focus of the budget on appeasing tricky coalition partners, Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) and Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP, with promises of multi-crore rupee financial assistance and projects from the Centre has justifiably allowed the Opposition’s INDIA bloc, particularly the Congress party, to mock Tuesday’s exercise as a “kursi bachao” budget.

Sops galore for Bihar

The seemingly endless flow of central sops and projects for Bihar – expressways, tourism hubs, temple corridors, flood mitigation schemes, industrial nodes, et al – also betrayed the confidence with which Sitharaman’s deputy, Pankaj Chaudhary, had rejected the possibility of granting the economically backward eastern state a special category status and special financial package just a day earlier.

So, if on Monday, Chaudhary had categorically informed Lok Sabha that a “case is not made out” to grant Bihar special category status and/or special financial package, a vociferous demand on which BJP’s allies JD(U), LJP (RV), and HAM have found common ground with its foes, the RJD, CPI-ML, and the Congress, on Tuesday, Sitharaman walked many extra miles to rain goodies on the state.

Big gains for Andhra

Likewise, though the finance minister did not cede Naidu’s demand for a special package for Andhra, she made sure that the Union budget provided the wily BJP ally no ground to complain by committing ample fiscal assistance for the TDP’s key poll promises. As such, the finance minister announced a Rs 15,000 crore special financial support through multilateral development agencies for Amravati, the new Andhra capital, and asserted that the Modi government “is fully committed to financing and early completion of the Polavaram Irrigation Project”.

Additionally, Sitharaman also announced that the Centre will provide Andhra funds for industrial development, essential infrastructure such as water, power, railways, and roads in Kopparthy node on the Vishakhapatnam-Chennai Industrial Corridor and Orvakal node on the Hyderabad-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor.

Purvodaya plan

The finance minister also announced that the Centre would formulate a new scheme, titled Purvodaya, for “all-round development” of Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, and Andhra Pradesh.

The heartburn that Sitharaman’s munificent endowments for Bihar and Andhra have caused among leaders from other states was all too evident in Parliament. INDIA bloc MPs from Punjab, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Karnataka cried foul over the “step-motherly” treatment given to their respective states in the budget while jabbing the finance minister for unwittingly conceding through her budget announcements that Modi’s longevity in the PM’s office is now at the mercy of Nitish and Naidu.

Nothing for poll-bound states

Albeit in hushed tones, even BJP MPs from states that the saffron party had entirely or almost completely swept in the Lok Sabha polls claimed that while the largesse for Bihar and Andhra was “understandable” and in line with “compulsions of coalition dharma,” at least some “tokenism” could have been extended for their states too.

A senior BJP MP from Madhya Pradesh, a state where BJP won all 29 Lok Sabha seats, told The Federal, “We had anticipated big announcements for Bihar and Andhra but we had also hoped that other states, including MP, will get some concrete schemes too... when we go to our constituencies, obviously people will ask what they got in the budget... I don’t know how I will explain this budget to my voters.”

Interestingly, the budget also broke away from the conventional practice followed by all earlier governments, including Modi’s last two regimes, of making some big-ticket announcements for poll-bound states. On this front too, Sitharaman seems to have held back. There were no major announcements specifically for Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand (the state figures as a beneficiary state under Purvodaya but unlike in the case of Bihar for which the budget spelt out specific projects, no such proposals have been made for Jharkhand), or Delhi; all of which will witness assembly polls over the next six months.

BJP-ruled states deprived too

The BJP and its allies had performed poorly in Maharashtra during the Lok Sabha polls, while in Haryana too the saffron party lost half of the 10 seats it had won in 2019 to the Congress.

Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate took a swipe at the finance minister for equanimously depriving both Opposition-ruled states as well as BJP-ruled states of any budget bounty. “This budget starts and ends with gifts for Bihar and Andhra Pradesh because the government is scared that the two Ns – Nitish and Naidu – will withdraw support if they aren’t kept in good humour and Modi will lose the PM’s chair... in order to keep the two Ns happy, the finance minister has deprived not only states ruled by Opposition parties of any concrete projects and financial assistance but even those states where the BJP is in power and performed well in the Lok Sabha polls,” Shrinate said.

The big question, though, after Tuesday’s budgetary exercise remains whether Sitharaman has been sufficiently generous to keep Nitish and Naidu happy. Sources in the JD(U) told The Federal that Nitish was “unhappy” with the manner in which Chaudhary rejected Bihar’s case for being granted special category status while responding to JD(U) MP Ramprit Mandal’s question in Lok Sabha on Monday. Whether the series of sops announced for Bihar by Sitharaman on Tuesday succeeds now in soothing Nitish’s frayed nerves remains to be seen.

'No reason to complain'

A BJP MP from Bihar told The Federal that the budget announcements for Bihar leave “no scope for dissatisfaction” within the JD(U) even though Nitish’s demand for a special category status and financial package for the state haven’t been met.

“If you look at the announcements for Bihar, the total financial outlay they would require would be close to Rs 1 lakh crore; Rs 26,000 crore has been allocated just for two new expressways, one two-lane bridge and another highway, while Rs 11,500 crore have been allocated under the irrigation benefit program... then there will be projects under Purvodaya, the temple and tourist corridors in Gaya, Bodhgaya, Rajgir, and Nalanda – all strongholds of our allies JD(U) and HAM as well as the industrial node in Gaya, the constituency of Jitan Ram Manjhi... so I don’t think Nitish or any other ally has a reason to complain. In fact, a special financial package may not have got so much money that will now be given to Bihar under different programs. This is the best deal,” the BJP MP said.

The BJP MP further added, “The reason why Bihar has not been given special category status is because of a decision taken by the National Development Council (NDC) and a group of ministers back in 2012 when the UPA was in power... the RJD and Congress are responsible for it but Modi has shown that despite that wrong decision of the UPA government, the BJP has found a way to usher progress and development in Bihar.”