Merely because the Union Budget speech does not mention a state, it does not mean that no money will go to it, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

“I could challenge the Congress party for all the budget speeches that they have delivered, have they named all the states?” the Union minister asked. “This is an outrageous allegation.”

She accused the Opposition of making a deliberate attempt to give a false impression to citizens that nothing had been given to their states.

The Opposition has accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of appeasing its coalition partners in the National Democratic Alliance, with the help of whom it came to power after the Lok Sabha elections this year. Opposition parties cited financial support and infrastructure projects announced in the Budget for Andhra Pradesh and Bihar.

The BJP formed the government at the Centre with the help of Bihar’s ruling Janata Dal (United) and Andhra Pradesh’s Telugu Desam Party, among other members of its National Democratic Alliance, after having fallen short of the majority mark in the polls.

“Budget speech of 2004-05 did not take the name of 17 states,” Sitharaman said on Tuesday. “Did money not go to those states? If they stopped the money, then they [Opposition] can raise this issue. Eighteen were not named in 05-’06, 16 were not named in 07-’08.”

Responding to the Opposition’s allegations about rising unemployment, Sitharaman claimed that the Centre created 12.5 crore jobs in the last ten years in comparison to 2.3 crore jobs created by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government in ten years.

The finance minister also questioned the credibility of the Global Hunger Index, which ranked India at 111 out of 125 countries in 2023.

The index, published by non-governmental organisations Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe, categorised India’s severity of hunger as serious. India fared worse than all its neighbours except Afghanistan. Pakistan is ranked 102nd on the list, Bangladesh 81st, Nepal 69th and Sri Lanka 60th.

“Flawed indexes such as global hunger index may not work for India,” she said in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. “How are conflict-ridden countries like Sudan, Pakistan ranked higher than us? They are struggling to afford atta while were are providing free ration to crores of citizens. How can they be higher than India? That is why it is difficult to establish these global indices’ credibility.”

She also added that the Centre is providing free food grains to 80 crore Indians under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana.

The Centre launched the scheme in March 2020 in the wake of the first phase of the nationwide Covid-19 lockdown to provide five kilograms of free rations every month to 80 crore poor citizens. The scheme was subsequently extended multiple times.

In December 2022, the government had announced that the National Food Security Act will subsume the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana till December 31, 2023. In November, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the scheme would be extended for another five years.

Also read: