Unemployment is the “biggest challenge facing the country” and the government's response is “too meager and will not have much impact on the critical situation”, P Chidambaram said.

Union Budget 2024: Criticizing the Union Budget, the Congress on Tuesday said unemployment was the “biggest challenge facing the country” and the government's response was “too meager” and would have little impact on the “critical situation”.

Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has “literally accepted” his party's proposals to abolish the Employment-Linked Incentive (ELI) scheme, the apprenticeship scheme that provides allowances to apprentices and the angel tax.

“I wish she would have adopted many more ideas from the Congress manifesto (for the Lok Sabha elections),” the former Union Finance Minister said at a press conference at the AICC headquarters on the Union Budget.

Unemployment is the “biggest challenge facing the country” and the government's response is “too meager and will have little impact on the critical situation”, he said.

Chidambaram also said that nothing in the budget speech “gives us confidence that the government will seriously address the issue of inflation”. He alleged that the government appeared to be “blissfully ignorant” of its own statistics on wage stagnation over the past six years.

Demanding the scrapping of the short-term army recruitment scheme Agneepath, he said many political parties, including the Congress, have demanded immediate scrapping of the scheme. However, there is no response from the government, said Chidambaram.

(with input from agencies)