CHENNAI: On arriving here after electioneering at Sankarankoil Assembly constituency, DMK chief M Karunanidhi, on Friday, maintained that he was unsure of the reason behind the ministers of the DMK skipping the Budget Session in Parliament.Reporters queried him as to whether the ministers skipped the session only to oppose the Centre for its stand at UNHRC with regard to the US sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka.On the Union Budget, the DMK chief termed it as a mixed bag, saying he welcomed a few sections and differed on some counts.“Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee benchmarked several key performance indicators for the upcoming fiscal year while presenting the previous year budget. It is disturbing, the fact that how far it had been achieved,” Karunanidhi said, in a statement.Karunanidhi recalled the projections and actuals in the performance of economy on par with the expenditure and revenue of the nation for the current fiscal.He said that the revision of basic customs duty to bicycles to 30 pc from 10 pc could not be accepted as it was the common man’s transport system.Karunanidhi quoted Pranab saying that the fiscal deficit was due to the subsidies and had been planning to cut it down. “Since our country is a developing one, the poor get purchasing power only through subsidies.Therefore, cut down of the subsidies will have to be decided after serious considerations”, he said.“The proposal to disinvesting the PSUs to raise `30,000 crore is not a good idea,” Karunanidhi noted.“There is no measure to control or to bring down the soaring prices,” he said.“We will have to wait to find out whether this budget will take the economy forward and uplift the lives of the people”, he added.However, Karunanidhi, who echoed the reasons accounted by the Finance Minister on the efforts made to conform the announcements made by President Pratibha Patil, maintained that the budget would help in that aspect.Besides, he welcomed direct subsidy for kerosene and LPG, weavers loan waiver, enhancement in agricultural lending, in SC/ST funds, and proposal to set up integrated vaccine in Chennai.
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