NEW DELHI, Feb 4 (UNI) Leader of the opposition Sonia Gandhi today termed as "populist document" the interim budget aimed at appeasing a larger chunk of voters while ignoring all others who did not matter in the NDA's electoral considerations.
The budget seeks to pander a large farming sector by announcing several sops while the government had ignored the farmers for the past four years which is evident from the fact that there were maximum number of debt-ridden farmers committed suicide during its rule, the Congress president said.
The NDA government failed to provide Minimum Support Price (MSP) to farmers for their crop such as paddy, potato, rubber and sugarcane, Gandhi said in the Lok Sabha while speaking on the debate on the interim budget.
Instead the government announced a package for the sugar industry while the sugarcane growers were running from "pillar to post" to realise their arrears, she added.
The Congress president said the weavers were totally ignored in the budget.
"There is nothing substantial for generating employment.
The glaring problem facing the country is the problem of unemployment, particularly among the educated youth," she added.
Gandhi said the government has failed to implement the universal education in the country.
"Rather it has communalised the total education system by re-writing the curriculum and poisoned the innocent minds." "The government not only destroyed the educational institutions but did not even spare the National Human Rights Commission, the Election Commission and the Central Bureau of Investigation," she said.
Gandhi charged the NDA government with "paralysing the CBI," saying the investigating agency was pressurised not to file case regarding the Ayodhya demolition.
The Liberhan Commission probing the Ayodhya demolition was also forced to close the investigations, she said.
Gandhi accused prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of adopting "double standards on all issues which reminds us of the famous movie of Dev Anand, Asli Nakli." "Atalji Atal Nahin Rehte Badalte Rehte Hain (Atalji does not remain firm but changes accordingly)," she said.
"His intransigent attitude is evident on issues such as the Ayodhya case, corruption charges on his colleagues, Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat developments and on Pakistan," the Congress president said.
The prime minister advises others to adopt a decorum in public life but his closest party colleagues never observed it, she said making an oblique reference to BJP general secretary Pramod Mahajan's recent utterances on her foreign origin.
Gandhi said her party will observe 'Maryada (restraint)' in the public life even during the coming Lok Sabha elections.
Taking a dig at finance minister Jaswant Singh for announcing special concessions to his native state Rajasthan, she said the NDA government had never shown such magnanimity towards the state when it was experiencing four-year-long drought during the Congress rule.
