Union Minister Arun Jaitley Friday rejected criticism for deviating from past by including direct tax proposal in an interim Budget saying the rebate in the income tax was a logical extension of steps taken by the government since 2014.
While in 2009 and then in 2014, the Congress-led UPA had brought indirect tax proposals in keeping with the needs of the economy, Finance Minister Piyush Goyal announced an income tax rebate on earnings of up to Rs 5 lakh.
"Budgets are a political reality in a Parliamentary democracy. So are elections, but this is not a move which anywhere contradicts or deviates from what this government has been doing in the past 5 years.
"It's actually a logical movement in the direction in which we were moving in last 5 years," he said during an interaction on interim Budget through video conferencing from New York.
Goyal's move was criticised by the Opposition saying with general election months away, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government had mandate ...
