THE CONGRESS ON Friday unveiled "Nyay Patra", the manifesto for the national elections 2024 with a spate of welfare promises, including a ₹1 lakh/annum "unconditional" income support to "each poor family" and "universal" cashless health insurance of up to ₹25 lakh for all families. The largest Opposition party, which ruled for the longest period, but has been out of power at the Centre for the last decade, also promised to waive student loans, including unpaid interest, fill 3 million vacancies in the central government and abolish the Agnipath scheme (shortterm contractual recruits in defence forces) by resuming regular hiring.
The largesse promised could be fiscally extravagant and impractical unless substantial additional resources are moblised via means like hefty new taxes, analysts said. The promised income support - Mahalakshmi scheme - for the poor itself could cost the exchequer ₹10.7 trillion or nearly a quarter of the size of the Union Budget FY24, assuming the number of "poor and vulnerable families" remain 107 million asidentified by the Socio-Economic Caste Census 2011, the latest available.
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