Minister's 'simultaneous polls' reply to 'lollipop to Bihar in Budget' charge

Reacting to a host of announcements for Bihar, Trinamool Congress MP Shatrughan Sinha dubbed the Union Budget as an "electoral budget". He also said that sops for the state – which is scheduled to go to polls later this year – were "like a lollipop.

"Bihar is my strength and I felt good about the provisions to Bihar, but it is also a time of elections, so was this an electoral budget taking Bihar to the forefront?... Infrastructural development in Bihar is good, but is this enough? What happened to the big special packages mentioned earlier?... This budget seems like a lollipop... Now about the salaried class, the exemption should have been 15 lakhs instead of 12 lakhs, but still, we appreciate it... A lot of things still need to be studied," he was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri responded to the electoral budget remark, saying in a huge country like India, there will always be elections. He said the issue will remain till India adopts the simultaneous elections regime.

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"What the opposition says is very boring. They say the same thing every year, criticism. They do not have issues. If there are some airports given to Bihar, there is no harm in it. Just because there are elections in Bihar that does not mean we should not provide airports to Bihar...This is unfounded criticism...We are the world's largest democracy, there will be elections somewhere or the other till we get one Nation One Poll," he said.

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RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, meanwhile, criticised the budget.

"They did not talk about (giving Bihar) a special package. I am not sure if they will even give Bihar the status of a special state... Today's budget was unfair to Bihar. Whatever was given in the last budget has just been repeated this time... Train fares are getting expensive. No relief has been given in that," he said.

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Nirmala Sitharaman today announced huge tax rebates for the middle class to boost consumption.