Rama Krishna Sangem
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharama’s straight 8th union budget for 2025-26 on February 1, Saturday has a Dhamaka – Income Tax relief up to Rs 12 lakh per year. With this, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has kept his promise of keeping the middle-class salaried pleased. In fact, people of middle-class and salaried people are the key constituency of the BJP for long and they have been looking for some big sop from the Modi government for the last five years.
Even FM Nirmala in her 80 minute long budget speech mentioned clearly that she was proposing raising IT exemption limits for the middle-class under the guidance of PM Modi. When she announced this move, there was all-round applause in Lok Sabha with members thumping desks and some even raised slogans like ‘Modi, Modi’. Nirmala began her speech at sharp 11 am amid sloganeering from the opposition members, but the mood in the House changed by the end at 12.20 noon, when the IT relief announcement came.
It’s not clear, but the Rs 12 lakh IT exemption will be applied only for the new regime of the tax payers. If so, there won’t be any other exemptions like saving investments etc for the payers. With this, the government will miss about Rs 1.1 lakh crore from the IT revenues, said the FM. The move is apparently intended to boost consumption levels in the country which has been stagnated over the last couple of years. There has been demands for raising the IT limits.
Eye on Delhi assembly elections?
Whether or not this move is aimed at current Delhi assembly elections, but the move would definitely reap political dividends to the BJP in the national capital polls. In fact, Delhi accounts for a very large number of middle-class and salaried people and this Rs 12 IT relief is a sort of direct poll bonanza for them. It is this middle-class and salaried voters are the big supporters of AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal. Now it is to be seen, if this budgetary gift will electorally help BJP.