Development races in billboards, but reality bites with jobless graduates and dusty files of stats. Yadav’s poetry stung: towering data piles amid poverty’s wail, flourishing rhetoric farms on barren policy fields. ‘Ask for jobs? Be self-reliant,’ they say, as prices skyrocket and farmers feign happiness.

Congress Legislature Party leader Aradhana Mishra Mona piled on, deeming the Rs 9.12 lakh crore budget ‘utterly dry.’ New initiatives? A pitiful Rs 43,000 crore slice. No farmer-friendly moves despite fertilizer woes, rising costs, and plummeting agri-growth. The doubled-income vow? Pure jumla.

She spotlighted snubs to outsource staff pay, teacher dues, and backward regions like Purvanchal and Bundelkhand. Fiscal gaps threaten extra levies on the public. ‘Betrayal of youth and educators,’ Mona charged. SP and Congress unite: this ‘farewell budget’ seals the regime’s fate come 2027.

As debates rage in Lucknow, the budget underscores deepening divides. Voters, weary of promises, may rewrite the script in the next electoral showdown.