‘Think about country’: Stalin slams PM over Union Budget allocations
Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin on Wednesday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “not avenge those who defeated” the BJP amid row over the omission of several states in the Union Budget 2024.
Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin on Wednesday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “not avenge those who defeated” the BJP amid row over the omission of several states in the Union Budget 2024.
Stalin said that the PM would be “isolated” if he ran the Centre according to his “political likes and dislikes”. “You said, ‘The election is over, now we have to think about the country.’ But yesterday #Budget2024 will save your rule, but not the Indian nation!” the Tamil Nadu chief minister in a post on X. “Run the government in general. Don’t be bent on avenging those who have yet defeated you. I am bound to advise that if you run the government according to your political likes and dislikes, you will be isolated.”
The post came hours after the Opposition walked out of the Rajya Sabha, accusing the Union government of discriminating against non-BJP ruled states.
Stalin on Tuesday announced that he will boycott the Niti Aayog meeting on July 27 convened by the Prime Minister because the Union government had “boycotted” Tamil Nadu in the Union Budget. “I’ve taken an important decision,” Stalin told reporters at the secretariat on Tuesday. “Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget has betrayed Tamil Nadu. This BJP government is not ready to do any good for those who have voted for them for the third time…Tamil Nadu is neither in BJP government’s thoughts nor action. This is injustice…I was preparing for the Niti Aayog meeting but since Tamil Nadu has been boycotted in the budget, I’ve decided to boycott the Niti Aayog meeting.”
Tamil Nadu’s BJP unit on Wednesday accused Stalin of trying to mislead people into believing that only the states mentioned in the budget speech will receive benefits.
Between 2014 and 2024, under the BJP Government, Tamil Nadu received ten times more through budget announcements than in years under the UPA government, said state BJP chief K Annamalai.
“Stalin has ignored that the previous Congress-DMK UPA government failed to include Tamil Nadu in six budget speeches between 2004 and 2014,” Annamalai said in a post on X. “...Stalin is the most vindictive CM whose governance track record over the last three years borders near zero, has been afraid to go to Niti Aayog meetings for the last two years citing flimsy reasons, and now has the audacity to lecture on governance to our PM.”
The ruling DMK and Tamil Nadu’s main opposition and BJP’s former ally AIADMK said that while a Union Budget is meant to create a balanced development across the country, coalition compulsion has favoured Andhra Pradesh and Bihar where BJP’s two main alliance partners, the TDP and the JDU, run alliance governments respectively.
While Tamil Nadu had sought disbursement of ₹37,000 crore as disaster relief, the Union government has so far disbursed only about ₹276 crore, Stalin had said on Tuesday. He pointed out that though the Union Government announced the second phase of the Chennai Metro Rail project three years ago, no funds have been released for the project and there has been no announcement of metro rail projects for the districts of Coimbatore and Madurai alongside no new railway and highway projects for Tamil Nadu.
The termination of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) compensation regime from July 2022 has caused a revenue shortfall of approximately ₹20,000 crore per annum for the state, he added.
Stalin also said that the Union government has copied the DMK’s state budget with initiatives such as hostels for working women, vocational training centres, hydro tunnel generation policy. “In particular, the Union government has announced today that it will provide skill training to 20 lakh (2 million) youth across the country for the next five years. However, in Tamil Nadu alone, we provide skill training to more than 15 lakh (1.5 million) youngsters every year,” Stalin said on Tuesday.