Budget 2024: How is Sitharaman placed between Chidambaram and Piyush Goyal?
interim budget, as seen in the past few decades, has whetted interest in how Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is going to structure it.
Read our full Budget 2024 coverage here
Coming right before the Lok Sabha elections, an interim budget is an effective vehicle on which an incumbent government's poll priorities can ride. Being a top national event, it gets a lot of eyeballs and remains in the public mind as the responses and debates it generates in different quarters echo for several days. It is the last big government event before elections to please chosen voter segments.
On the face of it, the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre seems to be free of the kind of pressures, or promises, an interim budget can generate for a ruling party facing elections just a few months later. It has scored surprising victories in three key states just last month which many see as a strong voter endorsement for the coming Lok Sabha elections, especially when the opposition's alliance has yet to take a potent shape.
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That's why there is talk of fiscal prudence before the interim budget. The ruling party is confident of a win in the next elections and has no pressure to please voters with benefits, so it can focus on the nuts and bolts of the economy.
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Yet, with an aggressive BJP talking of not just winning the
