New Delhi: The Union budget presented in parliament today was not prepared with the coming elections in mind, Union minister for Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur told NDTV in an exclusive interview. The election, he insisted, will be a referendum on the 10 years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government.
"This is just a budget to strengthen the base of a developed India (Viksit Bharat) and one to fulfil the expectations of young people," he said, expressing confidence that the track record of the government will be enough to win it a third straight term.
This, he said, is because the BJP government has delivered on each of its promises, be it the scrapping of constitution's Article 370, the Citizenship Amendment Act, the removal of the triple talaq or the building of the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
Likewise, the party, he said, will also meet its promise of building a "Viksit Bharat". On this 25-year path, the next five years would be crucial.
Asked about the Rs 1 lakh crore corpus formed by the government for sunrise sectors and entepreneurs and its overall effect on the economy and the country's economic progress, he recounted the progress made over the last 10 years -- from barely a hundred start-ups to the third largest start-up ecosystem, and the expansion of research groups.
Viksit Bharat was the government's next big promise today. Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman -- while presenting the interim budget in parliament --- said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government is working on making India a developed nation by 2047, when it completes 100 years of Independence.
This development, she said, will be "all round, all inclusive, and all pervasive".