President Murmu reached the new Parliament building in a six-horse buggy accompanied by the Presidential Bodyguards riding horses.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday raised the personal income tax rebate limit, doled out sops on small savings and announced one of the biggest hikes in capital spending in the past decade as she did a tight rope walk in the Budget between staying fiscally prudent and meeting public expectations in the year before general elections.
The bills were passed by voice vote.
According to DMK, the voters are already consolidated on ideological lines, hence the impact of anti-incumbency, whether against the BJP Centre or the DMK state may not be too much, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Special status to Yoga by categorising its promotion as charitable.
'Democracy cannot be taken for granted. It has to be fiercely guarded.'
BJP's reversals in rural Gujarat has prompted many policy watchers to predict that the Budget would have incentives for the agriculture sector and the rural economy.
The party's national general secretary, Mukul Roy, said, "This government has no moral or ethical right to place a railway budget."
Confident of securing a massive majority in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday outlined his vision for his next five-year term saying the Modi 3.0 government will put all its might to strengthen the foundation of 'Viksit Bharat' or a developed nation.
This will violate the time-honoured convention that a government elected for a five-year tenure presents only five full Budgets, but the NDA government will no doubt present it as yet another initiative of Mr Modi.
DDT is levied on dividends that a company pays its shareholders out of its profits. It is currently charged at the rate of 20.55 per cent, including a surcharge and education cess. Government may instead tax the shareholders receiving dividends, in a bid to help improve investor sentiment by addressing the multiplicity of taxes and bring down the effective tax rates for companies.
The Opposition on Wednesday slammed the Railway Budget saying it will promote regional imbalance and criticised its use to promote political ends. Initiating the general discussion on the Railway Budget in the Rajya Sabha, Kalraj Mishra (BJP) said Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have been neglected and most of the projects have gone to West Bengal.
'The BJP has everything to lose if it performs poorly in UP. It dreads a repeat of Bihar,' says Rajeev Sharma.
Parag Saxena, founding general partner and CEO, New Silk Road Partners, speaking on the Indian Union Budget 2009 at Asia Society in New York.
Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra on Wednesday wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla flagging alerts received by several opposition leaders about 'state-sponsored' attacks on their iPhones, and urged him to provide them protection to continue doing their duties.
rediffGURU and financial planning expert Colonel Sanjeev Govila (retd) answers your personal finance-related questions.
India Inc gave a thumbs up to the UPA-II's last Union Budget before the general elections next year and said Finance Minister P Chidambaram presented a "bold" and "growth-oriented" Budget.
Can Jaitley's team hope to garner 17% more on personal income tax?
Hindustan Unilever's Q3FY24 performance was lacklustre, with both sales and operating profit barely moving from the year-ago period due to price cuts and higher advertising costs. Besides weak demand, the FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) major is facing increased competitive pressures, particularly from regional players, which, coupled with a slow recovery in rural markets, could put revenues under pressure going forward. Margins are expected to remain range-bound as benefits from falling raw material costs are expected to be neutralised by rising promotional budgets.
Nirmala Sitharaman has designed the revenue mix in such a way that while Centre's share in taxes would grow a massive 25 per cent, states' share would grow a dismal 6 per cent.
'That Modi and the BJP can continue to treat the rising and expanding middle class this way shows that they have gamed its mind quite perfectly,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
Never before in post-reforms India have Union Budgets seen a steady reduction in fiscal deficit for five consecutive years, points out A K Bhattacharya.
Low consumer demand, a slide in investments and troubles in the banking sector should prompt the government to recalibrate taxes and expenditure. It is also important to ramp up spending on health care and education, says CII president Sumit Mazumder.
As the government's Budget moves unfold, market participants are treading with caution. As a result, the open interest (OI) positions have taken a beating during June, especially during the last few weeks.
Leaders of several opposition parties on Thursday hailed the Supreme Court verdict striking down the electoral bonds scheme and termed it an important step in ensuring transparency in electoral funding.
The Budget will be keenly watched (to see) whether there is a credible plan for reducing the fiscal deficit and whether populist measures can be avoided before the 2014 general elections," the Wall Street firm said in a note.
'ISRO Chairman Dr. Somanath's leadership truly created history and we extend our hearty congratulations to him and his team,' Venugopal said on X, formerly Twitter.
Jaitley increased the excise duty on most tobacco products by 10-15 per cent.
A total of 16 bills, including the GST Bill, Lokpal (Amendment) Bill, Factories (Amendment) Bill and the Anti-Hijacking Bill are pending in Parliament -- five in Lok Sabha and 11 in the Rajya Sabha.
Focus on agriculture, infrastructure and services sector can help the country's GDP to grow by more than 9 per cent.
India's economy grew 7.6 per cent in the September quarter of this fiscal and remained the fastest-growing large economy, mainly due to better performance by manufacturing, mining and services sectors, the government data showed on Thursday. The gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by 6.2 per cent in the July-September quarter of 2022-23. India remained the fastest-growing major economy, as China posted a 4.9 per cent growth in July-September 2023.
There are tell-tale signs of a slide in the quality of Budgets presented by the current administration, says Parthasarathi Shome.
That "Rollback Budget" ushered in an era of rollback.
Ahead of the Budget, the government has achieved almost half the divestment target of Rs 65,000 crore. FY23 divestment receipts are unlikely to be anywhere close to the budgeted target.
The bench gave liberty to Sharad Pawar to move the poll panel for allocation of the party symbol and directed the poll panel to allot it in one week of the application.
Unhappy that the Budget has not done anything to reduce escalating prices, the Communist Party of India said on Tuesday that it\nwould launch a countrywide agitation against high prices of essential commodities\ndespite the low rate of annualised inflation.
This Budget is about finding a balance between political objectives and economic uncertainties.
'In the final analysis, all Budgets everywhere are like the schemes hatched by A A Milne's lovable Winnie-the-Pooh.' 'They may be well-intended, but often go awry.' 'Although Pooh and his friends agree that he 'has very little brain', he is occasionally acknowledged to have a clever idea, usually driven by common sense.' 'This Budget at a first glance does not appear to belong to that latter category,' says economist Shreekant Sambrani.
The defence budget for this year, which is 1.79 per cent of the GDP, has come under criticism from former Army generals and military experts who say it is not adequate in view of the present security environment.
