FM Arun Jaitley presents Budget 2017: Union Budget is a damp squib, says Rahul Gandhi

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday presented his fourth and perhaps the most challenging Budget that softened the blow of currency ban with tax and other sops as he sought to revive growth.

While largely sticking to fiscal consolidation roadmap, Jaitley presented the Budget for 2017-18 amid strong headwinds caused by government decision to invalidate 86 per cent of the currency and the newly elected US President making protectionist noises.

Read| Budget 2017-18: Income tax for Rs 2.5 lakh-Rs 5 lakh slab reduced to 5%; 10% surcharge for Rs 50 lakh-1 cr; 15% surcharge on income above Rs 1 crore to continue

Reactions and views are flooding after FM Jaitley’s Budget announcement. Twitter is constantly abuzz with the politician reactions. Here is what various politicians said:

# Rail Budget lost identity due to it's merger in Union Budget: Mallikarjun Kharge, Leader of opposition, Lok Sabha

# This budget is women, poor-friendly budget; PM Modi has fulfilled his promise made in 2014 to bring in transparency in politics: Amit Shah, BJP President

# A controversial Budget 2017 which is clueless, useless, baseless, mission less and actionless. Taxpayers still have restrictions on withdrawals. Remove all restrictions immediately. And where are the figures for #DeMonetisation? Misleading. Full of jugglery of numbers and hollow words which mean nothing: Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal Chief Minister

# This budget will facilitate the changes that our country is going through: PM Narendra Modi

# It's a historic and important budget which will have a long-term impact: Nitin Gadkari, Union Transport Minister

# Consider it mix budget. Industry hoped lot more for promotion of investment bt I think FM did whatever was possible: DS Rawat, Gen Secy ASSOCHAM

# Nothing on defence pending; How are they fighting UP Elections? Did they get donations in cheque or digital payment?: Renuka Chowdhury, Congress

# Its a very good budget with focus on skill development, it is women friendly: Sonali Jaitley(daughter of FM)

# What is the need to present the Budget every year? Were all announcements of last year's budget fulfilled?: Uddhav Thackeray, Shiv Sena

# Budget 2017 is just 'a fairly routine' Budget: Former RBI governor C Rangarajan

# We were expecting fireworks, instead got a damp squib, any step to clean political funding will be supported by us: Rahul Gandhi, Congress

# The budget numbers don't seem to add up, as there is huge expansion on Govt spending on schemes: Manish Tewari, Congress

# Path breaking budget, a new era has begun: Suresh Prabhu, Railway Minister