FM Nirmala Sitharaman briefs BJP MPs in Parliament over 'people-friendly' offerings

As part of its outreach of the Modi government’s offerings in this year’s Budget, lawmakers of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) received a briefing by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman at Parliament on Friday, where they were taught the “people-friendly” offerings.

The finance minister gave a presentation to the party’s MPs in the Lok Sabha as well as the Rajya Sabha. With the Lok Sabha elections scheduled next year, the party has chalked out a massie outreach programme where they intend to highlight region-specific sops in the Budget.

After the briefing, it emerged that the lawmakers will highlight budget proposals according to their areas, MPs from a region which comes under a agriculture belt will highlight announcements in the agricultural sector that could be beneficial to the voters. Specific attention was paid to announcements for South India.

Read | Amid Adani stock rout, FM Sitharaman says markets 'well-regulated'

The finance minister, those attending said, asked the lawmakers to highlight that the government’s aim is to remove tax exemptions, and that it wants to give more money in the hands of voters so that they are free to invest.

The party has formed a nine member committee headed by former Bihar deputy CM and Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Modi, who has to organise a 12-day outreach campaign. As part of the committee are general secretary Sunil Bansal, Kisan Morcha chief Rajkumar Chahar, Yuva Morcha chief Tejasvi Surya, besides West Bengal MLA Ashok Lahiri and the party’s spokesperson on economic affairs Gopal Agarwal.

Across a 12-day period, the committee will organise press conferences on the Budget in 50 locations, and all of the party’s 303 Lok Sabha MPs and 92 Rajya Sabha MPs will have to travel to specific places. Among that union ministers Anurag Thakur, G Kishen Reddy and Rajeev Chandrasekhar will travel to Jammu, Kochi and Coimbatore respectively, while Modi will go to Jaipur and Ahmedabad. Some of the key points that will be highlighted in these press conferences are increase in capital expenditure and the benefits of the new income tax regime.