Tharoor bowls ‘bouncer’ at government in budget debate

New Delhi, July 8 (IANS) Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Monday used cricketing terms to attack the Union Budget 2019-20, saying it has "unnecessarily defensive strokes" and "quite a few no balls" while claiming that key issues such as farm distress were not addressed properly.

Initiating the discussion in the Lok Sabha, the Thiruvananthapuram MP also said that we have left with a "trishanku budget" which is "neither here nor there".

"Since cricket is on our minds these days with World Cup semi-final tomorrow (on Tuesday), let me say that instead of bold boundaries we expected in this first budget after the elections, what we have are unnecessarily defensive strokes, drop catches and quite a few no balls and wides," he said.

The Congress MP said that the budget presented last week was characterised rather by a "mediocre set of announcements, distinctive misses, defining silences of matter of substance".

The budget reflects "yet another disregard for the genuine concerns, hopes and aspirations of our people who have given a fresh mandate to this government", he said.

"This is perhaps the first budget in the history of the country where allocations of the engine of the documents were not mentioned. For over two hours of the speech we were waited for a substance but it was recitations of achievements... We must say that we are left with trishanku budget neither here not there".

There was hardly any mention of country's GDP growth rate, he said, adding that the word 'GDP' came up only once.

"Hastily and ill thought through demonetisation bears the large share of responsibility for shutting down lakhs of small and micro enterprises, throwing many more lakhs of people out of work," he alleged.

Tharoor also raised the issue of agrarian distress and farmer suicides.

"Our nation's farmers who provide food security have in the last five years received stepmotherly treatment form this government which has resulted in record level of farmer suicides," he alleged.