"Astonishing In Election Year": Shashi Tharoor Says Kerala Neglected In Budget

Congress's Shashi Tharoor, who has been making headlines lately over what many see as his softened stance towards the NDA government, was extremely critical of the Union budget 2026 presented today by Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman.  

In an exclusive interview with NDTV, he said, "I'm not one of those persons who says that everything that is wrong is wrong and that nothing good can be seen... (but) As an MP from Kerala, I'm deeply concerned about the neglect of my state".

He said it is something "that truly troubles me, and I think that's even more astonishing in an election year". 

"It looks like, given that the ruling party doesn't seem to have much hope in Kerala, they've just decided to neglect it altogether.  And to my mind, this is really unfortunate, because a budget is meant to serve the entire nation and is meant to serve all states.

The government, he said, has been "embarrassingly selective" in its choices and has been "underwhelming in its performance".

"Even some of the things you were praising, like fiscal deficit control, has come at the expense of significant expenditures by cutting expenditures in crucial sectors, including CapEx. So we can't really cheer the fiscal deficit in its own right out of context," he added.

He also jeered at the government's claim that it has met its fiscal deficit target. 

"Statistically, she's fine, except for one thing," he said. "I have been serving long enough in this to remember her predecessor, Arun Jaitley, talking about bringing the fiscal deficit down to 3.5 per cent. We have had to scale the numbers up considerably since the late Arun Jaitley passed on. And it is now you are expecting us to applaud and celebrate 4.4 and 4.3, whereas the target 10 years ago was supposed to be 3.5," he said.