India's opposition parties have sharply criticized the Union Budget, calling it inadequate to address the country's economic woes and accusing the BJP-led government of using it to woo voters in Bihar and Delhi ahead of upcoming elections. Leaders from the Congress, TMC, DMK, SP, and CPI(M) voiced their disapproval, highlighting concerns over inflation, unemployment, and the lack of substantial measures to support the agricultural sector and the poor. They also criticized the tax cuts for the middle class as insufficient and coming too late after years of high taxes and rising prices.
After questioning him for four hours in the morning, Chidambaram was taken to a special court in Delhi which sent him to CBI custody till Monday.
Commenting on economic reforms, he claimed that accord is necessary to achieve these objectives in India.
The apex court was hearing two separate petitions filed by Chidambaram challenging the Delhi high court August 20 verdict by which his anticipatory bail was dismissed in the cases registered by both the agencies-- CBI and ED.
Believe it or not, Prime minister Manmohan Singh's Cabinet is unable to arrive at consensus on the exact identity of AADHAAR -- Unique Identification Number (UID).
Home Minister P Chidambaram, who as finance minister had slashed taxes, on Wednesday suggested that rich should be taxed more even though 'many people' would not like the idea.
Sitharaman, India's first full-time woman finance minister, had in July 2019 ditched the colonial legacy of a Budget briefcase for the traditional 'bahi-khata' to carry Union Budget papers.
The Supreme Court on Monday allowed Congress MP Karti Chidambaram, who is facing criminal cases that are being probed by the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation, to travel abroad.
The Union finance ministry has kicked off the exercise for preparation of the Union Budget for the fiscal year 2012-13 and has asked all ministries to rush proposals by October 31 for inclusion in the second supplementary budget for 2011-12 to be presented in the winter session of Parliament.
Dr Murali Manohar Joshi, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, has demanded that Home Minister P Chidambaram should be dropped from the cabinet for his alleged misdeeds in leaking the PAC report, sending wrong data of most-wanted persons to Pakistan, his role in the 2G spectrum scam and for the rise in fuel prices when he was the finance minister.
CPI (M) General Secretary Prakash Karat called all 'non-Left' parties to resist Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram's financial sector reforms plans. In a recent article in People's Democracy, Karat wrote, 'After the burst of the real estate bubble and the financial crisis in the United States, one would have expected this ardent advocate of financial sector reforms to rethink. But that has not happened.'
With the fall of Congress, Chidambaram's political graph too started moving southwards.
Though no reason was officially cited for his absence, Trinamool Congress sources here said Mitra will attend a crucial parliamentary meeting of the party in Kolkata on Tuesday to discuss the Centre's decision to hike diesel price, restrict of subsidised cooking gas and allow FDI in retail and decide the future of the party's ties with the United Progressive Alliance.
Many PSU banks had recently cut interest rate on loans for two-wheelers and consumer durables.
Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram's mother Lakshmi Palaniappan died on Friday. She was 92, her family said.
A small-scale industrialist in Puducherry was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly posting 'offensive' messages on the micro-blogging site Twitter targeting Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram's son Karti Chidambaram.
Justice A K Pathak had asked Chidambaram to join questioning and cooperate in the investigation as and when called by the CBI.
Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Sunday slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party for not supporting the United Progressive Alliance government's efforts to pass a resolution in Parliament on the Sri Lankan Tamils issue and rejected accusations hurled at the Congress.
The father-son duo are in the radar of the probe agencies in another case concerning the Aircel-Maxis deal.
Congress sources have told rediff.com that Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram or External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee will replace Shivraj Patil, who resigned on Sunday, as home minister. The announcement is likely to be made in the next couple of hours after the all-party meeting called to discuss the Mumbai terror attacks.
'During his stint as prime minister, he got 270 million people out of poverty.' 'This, according to the World Bank, is the fastest compression of poverty anywhere in the world.' Arvind Mayaram, the former finance secretary, recalls his encounters with Dr Manmohan Singh.
The former finance minister, who walked out of jail on Wednesday night, joined other Congress MPs voicing their protest against the steep hike in onion prices.
India can never be a truly happy, prosperous country unless our passion for growth is combined with compassion for the poor, said Chidambaram.
The Congress Jananayaga Peravai is an offshoot of the Tamil Maanila Congress led by late G K Moopanar.
Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram on his arrival at Chennai from Delhi on Wednesday refused to take the official vehicle and instead preferred his private car to proceed to the city from the airport.
Chidambaram, 74, was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation on August 21 and is lodged in Tihar jail under judicial custody in the corruption case.
"The government is wrong. It is wrong because it is clueless," Chidambaram said. "It is unable to look for the obvious clues because it is stubborn and mulish in defending its catastrophic mistakes like demonetisation, flawed GST, tax terrorism, regulatory overkill, protectionism, and centralised control of decision-making in the Prime Minister's Office."
Chidambaram had on Wednesday rushed to a trial court for protection from arrest in Aircel-Maxis case before approaching the Delhi high court in connection with the INX Media case, in which he has been asked by probe agencies to join investigations.
The veteran Congress leader said people asked him why only he had been arrested, but he had no answer.
Special Judge O P Saini issued notice to the agency and sought its response by October 8.
While posting the matter for hearing on Thursday, the bench said: "We are conscious that we should not usurp the jurisdiction of the concerned trial court".
This is the first time that the 73-year-old former finance and home minister is being grilled by the ED in this case.
Other ministers who have presented five straight annual financial statements include Arun Jaitley, P Chidambaram, Yashwant Sinha, Manmohan Singh and Morarji Desai.
The probe agency is understood to have alerted all airports and other ports of entry to prevent Chidambaram from leaving, sources said.
The court directed Chidambaram to cooperate with the ED's investigation.
Chidambaram has not been named as an accused in the FIR and the CBI is yet to file a chargesheet in the matter.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is set to create history when she presents her seventh straight Budget on Tuesday for the fiscal 2024-25, surpassing the record of former prime minister Morarji Desai. Sitharaman, who will turn 65 next month, was in 2019 appointed as India's first full-time woman finance minister when Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a decisive second term.
Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram, at a joint press conference along with Coal Minister Sriparkash Jaiwal and Minister of Law and Justice Salman Khursheed said that if the Bhartiya Janata Party continues to disrupt Parliament and refuses to hear Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, "Then we would have to find out alternatives to address the people of India through the media to put forward our point of view."
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