NEW DELHI: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman addressed criticisms regarding the Union Budget 2024 during a Rajya Sabha session on Wednesday, emphasizing that not every state can be mentioned in the budget. She explained that the absence of a state's name in the budget does not imply a lack of benefits from central government schemes.

Sitharaman's comments came in response to opposition claims that the budget favored Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, led by Chief Ministers Nitish Kumar and Chandrababu Naidu, respectively. These states' support for the BJP-led NDA government at the center has drawn scrutiny.

"Budget speeches cannot cover every state," Sitharaman remarked. "For instance, the recent decision to establish a port at Vadhavan in Maharashtra involves an allocation of over Rs 76,000 crores. Maharashtra was not mentioned in the Vote on Account Budget in February or in this year's speech. Does this mean Maharashtra was overlooked?"

She also responded to criticisms from the Trinamool Congress (TMC), which alleged that West Bengal received no allocations in the latest budget. Sitharaman countered that many schemes introduced over the past decade have not been implemented in West Bengal due to state-level issues.

"The fact that a state is not mentioned does not mean it loses out on central schemes or external aid from organizations like the World Bank or ADB. These are distributed as per routine procedures," she said.

Sitharaman accused the opposition, particularly the Congress party, of misleading the public by suggesting that their states are neglected. She challenged the Congress to review their own past budget speeches and identify if every state was named.

The debate intensified as INDIA Bloc MPs staged a walkout from the Lok Sabha, protesting what they perceive as unfair treatment of opposition-ruled states in the Union Budget 2024. Speaker Om Birla reprimanded them for disrupting the Question Hour and urged adherence to parliamentary norms. The MPs later protested outside the Parliament, labeling the budget as an "assault on India's federal structure."

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