Nirmala Sitharaman briefs budget 2023 to BJP MPs ahead of party's outreach drive

Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday presented the Union budget 2023-24 to all the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs in a meeting ahead of the Parliament sitting. The meeting was attended by all the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha MPs. An all-India outreach programme will be undertaken by the party after the briefing.

Union ministers Piyush Goyal, Kiren Rijiju, Dharmendra Pradhan, V Muraleedharan and BJP MPs Sukanta Majumdar and Sushil Modi are among those who attended the meeting.

Sitharaman presented the Union budget earlier which is also the last full budget by the Narendra Modi-led NDA government ahead of the general election 2024. Altering tax structure and raising the limit to claim tax rebate to ₹7 lakh per annum under the new regime has been one of the key takeaways of the budget.

During her nearly one-and-a-half-hour-long speech, the Finance Minister announced that the government proposes to increase capital expenditure outlay by 33 per cent to ₹10 lakh crore in 2023-24, which would be 3.3 per cent of the GDP.

An outreach programme by the right-wing party is set to begin from February 4 to explain benefits of Union budget to citizens. All Union ministers will travel across the country and hold press conferences, interact with people including prominent figures.

According to sources as quoted by news agency ANI, Union I&B minister Anurag Thakur will go to Jammu, Tourism Minister G Kishen Reddy will head to Kochi, Union minister Rajeev Chandrashekar will go to Coimbatore. Similarly, other Union ministers will visit to Raipur, Bhopal and Bengaluru among other states.