New Delhi: After being humiliated by the Aam Aam Aadmi party in Delhi Assembly polls, pressure is mounting within the BJP to present a pro-poor Budget and not to administer the "bitter medicine" that Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed was needed to rescue the economy.
AAP victory has set senior BJP leaders thinking that it may not be wise to abandon all populism in the Union Budget. The Land Acquisition Ordinance had anyway not gone down well with the voters in the Delhi's rural areas and is believed to have fuelled anger against BJP.
According to a report published in Economic Times, the government may find it difficult to get the Land Acquisition Bill passed in Parliament, and it will have no other option than to convene a joint session of parliament.
The defeat in Delhi is a setback to Modi's efforts to consolidate power in the Rajya Sabha in order to push through tough economic measures, a senior party leader told Economic Times.
"This kind of defeat is completely unexpected and numbing for the party. The senior leaders will sit together and introspect about what went wrong, and more important, what can be done now," he added.
Elections are due in Bihar later this year and the Delhi results are supposed to have an impact on these elections. The government may use the budget to send a message across to the people that it cares for them.
However finance minister Arun Jaitely is not in favor of letting the adverse Delhi results influence the budget in any way. He will present 2015 Budget on February 28.
