Rahul slams Budget, says BJP betrayed middle class

Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, on Monday said the Union Budget for FY25 betrayed the middle class by increasing the tax on the long-term and short-term capital gains and removing the benefit of indexation.

- ARCHIS MOHAN

He claimed the middle class, which, he said, has been the ruling party's core support base, were now deserting it.

Participating in the discussion on the Budget in the Lok Sabha, Gandhi faulted the Centre's Employment-Linked Incentive (ELI) Scheme, which, he said, focuses on the top 500 companies that employ merely a per cent of the workforce, but ignores the informal sector. The Congress leader said 99 per cent of the youth will not benefit from the scheme. In an explanatory note that the Congress released later in the day on Gandhi's speech, the party asked how 500 companies with 7 million employees could hire 10 million interns.

In his 40-minute speech in the Lok Sabha, Gandhi spoke of the atmosphere of fear in the country, which, he alleged, also pervaded the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). "Why is it that my friends in the BJP are terrified, the ministers are terrified, and farmers are terrified, workers, youngsters...?"