Goyal hits back at Chidambaram, says most of the schemes were conceived way before elections

New Delhi, Feb 1: Hitting back at former union minister P Chidambaram for saying that the Interim Budget 2019 was election oriented, Interim Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday said schemes such as the cleanliness drive 'Swacch Bharat Abhiyaan' and to build toilets in villages were taken way before elections.

Refuting Chidambaram's remarks, Goyal asked why the previous Congress-led governments did not work towards providing gas connections and electrifying villages.

"There was no election when we talked about Swachchata and built 9-10 crore toilets. Also, when we said we will provide electricity to every house in all villages and we did it, there was no election," he told in an interview to ANI when asked to comment on Chidambaram's remarks.

Chidambaram had earlier described the Interim Budget as an "Account for Votes" and not a Vote on Account and said the Modi government has further weakened fiscal stability. "It was not a Vote on Account but an Account for Votes," Chidambaram told the media today.

"It was a full-fledged Budget accompanied by an election campaign speech. By doing so, the government has trampled on time-honoured conventions," he further said.

Asserting that the country has witnessed an exponential growth in the last 5 years, Goyal said development has reached all corners, adding that the Prime Minister has worked for all sections of society.

"I believe govt has succeeded on all levels.Inflation is down to 4.5% from 10%. If inflation had continued like times of Congress then your household budget would have been 35-40% higher," he told ANI's Smita Prakash.

Piyush Goyal on GST:

Rubbishing that the GST plunged economy into a chaos and that it was not properly implemented, Goyal said, " If the tax collection is so good, it shows that GST is a successful measure. It has prepared the nation for rapid development. It is not a poor implementation, there is no country which dared to make such a large scale change."

"This was the first large scale change in the history of independent India. It's natural that if this is done there will be a few difficulties but I thank taxpayers and those in business sector that they accepted this and are getting direct benefits today," he added.

While proposing the Interim Budget in Parliament on earlier in the day, Piyush Goyal rolled out the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme which would give direct income support of Rs 6,000 per annum to farmers who own less than two hectares of land.

Congress had lashed out at this scheme. Rahul Gandhi wrote on Twitter, Gandhi said that giving Rs 17 per day to farmers is "an insult to everything that they stand for".