Former Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has likened the BJP-led Centre to an ‘incurable patient’ who can’t be cured even by the medicines of the Chief Economic Adviser.

The fiscal budget, the last ‘full budget’ to be presented by the BJP-led Centre as Lok Sabha polls are due to be held by April-May next year, was tabled in Parliament last week by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. The BJP can at best present only a ‘vote-on-account’ next year and had ensured that no new taxes were levied on this year’s budget ahead of Assembly polls in a few States and next year’s Lok Sabha polls.

Criticizing the Union budget, P. Chidambaram (who had presented many fiscal budgets in Parliament in the past) said that the budget didn’t have many welfare schemes for the poor in particular and the people in general. “It’s clearly a budget prepared with elections in the mind and has clearly revealed the helplessness of the BJP which is ruling at the Centre,” he said.

“The Centre led by the BJP is like a ‘chronic patient’ whose illness can never be cured even by the best of medicines (advices) of the Chief Economic Adviser,” Chidambaram said and ‘accused’ the Centre of neglecting ‘medicines’ prescribed by the CEO and acting on its own in an arbitrary manner. “This has made the Centre’s situation worse than it was some time back,” Chidambaram said.