Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi: Following Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Union Budget presentation, Congress MP P Chidambaram posed five critical questions to the government in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday. Chidambaram, who served as Finance Minister during the Congress-led UPA II government, urged the ruling BJP to implement several measures including a daily minimum wage of Rs 400 and a legal guarantee for the Minimum Support Price (MSP), a long-standing demand of protesting farmers.
Chidambaram’s demands also included writing off unpaid education loans up to March, abolishing the Agnipath military recruitment scheme, and allowing states to opt out of the NEET exam for medical admissions.
In a pointed remark to the BJP, Chidambaram accused the party of borrowing ideas from the Congress manifesto for the 2024 general elections. “Copying is not prohibited in this House… in fact, copying is encouraged and rewarded,” he said, eliciting laughter from opposition MPs.
Focusing on unemployment, Chidambaram highlighted the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy’s estimate of a 9.2% national unemployment rate in June 2024. He questioned the efficacy of the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme in job creation and asked for clarity on its outcomes to better understand the potential of the newly introduced Employment-Linked Incentive (ELI) scheme.
In her budget speech, Sitharaman introduced three ELI schemes, including a five-year industry internship initiative, which the Congress claims was copied from their proposals. These measures, praised by BJP leaders as transformative, are intended to create up to 30 lakh jobs in the manufacturing sector. However, Chidambaram expressed skepticism, doubting the scheme’s ability to deliver on its promises and warning it might become another unfulfilled election promise.
Chidambaram underscored his point by citing reports of massive applications for limited job vacancies, such as the Uttar Pradesh Police Department’s 60,244 vacancies attracting 48 lakh applicants and Air India’s 2,216 positions drawing 25,000 candidates.
Despite government claims of no job crisis, Chidambaram insisted that unemployment be taken seriously and called for scrutiny of the ELI scheme’s outcomes to determine the government’s true intentions regarding job creation.
