“The states where the Opposition parties won and people rejected them have got nothing. If there is no balance, how will development take place? We condemn this. All Opposition parties condemn this,” Kharge said.
But when Sitharaman, who was present in the House, got up to speak, the Opposition walked out. At this, Dhankhar lamented that the LoP has “under a ploy and strategy” misused the opportunity given to him by the chair and caused this disruption “as a weapon”.
However, Sitharaman continued with her response and maintained that in a budget speech one does not get an opportunity to name every state. “This is a deliberate attempt by Congress to give an impression to the people that nothing has been given to our state… I challenge the Congress party that for all the budget speeches that they have delivered, in each of those speeches have they named all the states? This is an outrageous allegation,” she said.The FM said between the Vote on Account presented in February and the budget, Maharashtra had not been named but the Union cabinet had approved a ₹76,000 crore project for building a port at Vadhavan (in Palghar district).When Trinamool MPs joined the Opposition protest and shouted that “injustice” has been done to West Bengal in the budget, Sitharaman said the state government has not implemented several central schemes and cited the example of Ayushman Bharat.
