“Votewa Ka Time Hai Na”: Nitish Kumar’s Dig at Proposed Income Tax Rebate

GG News Bureau

Saharsa, 3rd Feb. “It’s election time,” Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar responded cynically on Thursday when asked if the Union Budget proposal to raise the personal income tax rebate limit would benefit the middle class.

“Votewa ka time hai na,” the JD(U) leader said in a typically Bihari accent when journalists approached him in Saharsa district as part of his mass outreach program ‘Samadhan Yatra’.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed raising the rebate cap to 7 lakh and lowering the maximum surcharge rate on personal income tax from 37% to 25% in the budget she presented on Wednesday.

Kumar, who called the budget “disappointing” on Wednesday, was upset by the reduced budgetary outlay for schemes such as MNREGA, Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi, and Pradhan Mantri Krishi Samman Yojana.

“Spending on health and education has also been reduced. I wonder what are the priorities (of the central government),” said Kumar.

“Even the much-touted Saptarshi (seven priorities) does not seem to offer much upon close scrutiny,” said the JD(U) leader, who had broken ties with the BJP in August 2022.

Now a member of a “united opposition” for taking on the BJP in Lok Sabha elections next year, Kumar said, “Poor states like Bihar have once again been neglected. We have been growing rapidly, but our request for special status to expedite the process has been ignored.”

The longest-serving CM of Bihar, who has been urging for special category status for “all backward states”, also lamented “reduction in borrowing limits for states saying “it would further hamper our ability to marshal resources”.

He also lashed at the Centre for “progressively increasing the burden to be shared by states of schemes which it launches and claims all credit for”.