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InDepth

he three elections that BJP was to steal a march over opposition gave vent to their pent-up feelings in
lost from Hindi heartland of to announce a populist Budget. The the Assembly elections to three states
Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan government has now come up with that were pinned as a sort of semi-
and Chhattisgarh were per- Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi, final before the 2019 general elections.
T haps a wake up call for Modi a scheme for direct benefit transfer of There is an income support scheme
Government. It first announced 10 per 6,000 to small and marginal farmers. for farmers and a pension scheme for
cent reservation for upper castes on The government has also announced informal sector workers earning up to
economic grounds and then has tried sops for lower middle class, by dou- 15,000 a month. There are income tax
to win over the farming community, bling the threshold income tax rebate concessions for the middle class that
the salaried class and the pensioners. limit to 5 lakh. A mega pension scheme have been carefully framed to target
Agrarian distress was a crucial fac- has been announced for the unorgan- the lower rung. The 6,000 a year sup-
tor that led to the BJP losing out to the ised sector. According to financial port to farmers will benefit 12 crore
Congress in the Hindi heartland states wizards, this was necessitated by the households, which is almost half of
of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Congress Party Chief’s announcement the total number of households. The
Pradesh. of its ‘guaranteed minimum income’ personal Income Tax rebate on those
The Congress again took an initia- promise. with taxable annual income of up to
tive and announced a loan waiver in No doubt that the Interim Budget five lakh a year will benefit three crore
Punjab where it came to power in 2017 2019 has the inkling of the upcom- middle class voters. The housing-relat-
dethroning Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP ing general election. It shows that a lot ed tax proposals can boost real estate
alliance government. Rajasthan, Mad- of thought has gone into identifying sector, which is a job-creator and is
hya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh followed and targeting the sections of popula- spread across all states.
with loan waivers. Naturally, it was but tion across social segments that were Interim Budget 2019-20 was pre-
expected from the Modi government perhaps unhappy with the Centre and sented in Parliament by the Union

Tehelka / 28 february 2019 18 www.Tehelka.com