Ahead of the announcement of the Union Budget on July 23rd of this financial year by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the opposition party Congress criticized and attacked the BJP government, covering issues like “unemployment, inflation, economic inequality, consumption, foreign direct investment, and trade imbalance.” 

Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate attacked the Modi government on Friday and said that the budget would ruin the economic landscape and that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is disconnected from the'real India’. “The budget would reflect this detachment, benefiting only a selected few,” she quoted.

The Congress party president, Mallikarjun Kharge, shared a post on X by addressing Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He wrote, “By telling one lie after another on jobs, you are rubbing salt in the wounds of the youth!" The senior lawmaker asked three times about the disparity in data within the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). 

The Congress spokesperson addressedthe fact that the economic condition and inequality in India are poorer than under British rule. “The topmost 1% of India’s population today owns 40.10% of the country’s wealth, and the bottom 50% of India’s population controls only 6.40% of the wealth,” she said. She targeted the Modi government over the problem of inflation and other economic issues: “Inflation is on the rise, and that is coupled with a fall in income levels among people. Close to 48% of families in this country are suffering from falling income and rising prices, and that is leading to an increased dependency on savings to survive." 

Shrinate mentioned there is a genuine increase in the inflation of food by 9%: “High prices and rising inflation have really broken the back of the poor and middle class of the country. The reality today is that people in this country have to pay more for food, clothes, and transport, among other things," she said.

Speaking about the economic issues, she said, “Joblessness should be one of the most important matters to be addressed in this year's budget. Demonetisation, GST, and COVID led to a loss of 10.6 million jobs in the informal sector, along with a loss of 270,000 central PSU jobs." 

The Congress leader blamed Prime Minister Modi and the BJP government for the decreasing value of the rupee against the dollar in the international market. “PM Modi, who once said that his dignity is intrinsically intertwined with the value of the rupee, inherited it at 58 to a dollar, and now a dollar is 84 rupees," she said. She criticized the government for the decreasing numbers of investments in different sectors, such as education, the health sector, and agriculture. She added that the only thing the BJP government has successfully done is create monopolies in different sections of society.