Entire country was "distraught and harassed," Mayawati said (File)

Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati has slammed the union budget presented today by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in parliament, saying the announcements made in the speech would only help capitalists.

"This budget intends to promote big industrialists and capitalists and help them at every level. This will make more complex issues like reservation to Dalits and backward castes, inflation, poverty, unemployment, farmers' crisis. It would also make capital development impossible," she said on Twitter.

"It has to be seen as to how this Budget of theirs is actually beneficial for the people of the country at the ground level," she said in a tweet, adding that the entire country was "distraught and harassed" by poverty, unemployment, poor educational and health facilities.

Ms Sitharaman, first woman to hold the office full-time, delivered her first Budget speech. In a first, she introduced the Budget bahi khata (ledger) or red cloth folder enclosed with a string and emblazoned with the national emblem, ditching a colonial-era tradition of carrying Budget papers in a briefcase.

Announcing the Budget, she said India will become a $3-trillion economy this year. She proposed to extend the 25 per cent ceiling to corporates with a turnover up to Rs. 400 crore, permit filing of income tax returns using either Aadhaar or PAN, and announced a TDS or tax deducted at source of 2 per cent on cash withdrawals exceeding Rs. 1 crore in a year.

With inputs from PTI