The 16th Lok Sabha saw some intelligent and eloquent speeches from members, especially first timers, on Thursday during the discussion on budget.

BJP's first time MP from Mumbai, Poonam Mahajan, made a brilliant debut with flawless, eloquent and dignified speech in Hindi. She did her father, the late Pramod Mahajan, who was both articulate and biting in his speeches in the House, proud.

While being adulatory of the budget and invoking AB Vajpayee and Narendra Modi, she spoke up for Mumbai, saying the city's contribution to the national tax kitty was one-fourth of the whole, but it did not get any allocation for infrastructure.

This is the first time in many years that a Mumbai MP spoke so emphatically for the city's needs in Parliament. Mahajan showed that she has a firm grasp over the party's developmental rhetoric as exemplified by Vajpayee and Modi, and wielded it to make the maximum impact through her speech.

Praising the allocation for roads, she said: "Manzil toh nazar aata hain lekin raasta chahiye manzil tak pahunchne ke liye (The destination is visible but you need a road to reach the destination)."

"While I support the budget, I have a suggestion to make. The financial capital of India, one that contributes a considerable GDP to the country as a whole, Mumbai has not received enough attention in this budget." She spoke of the spirit of Mumbai, where people continue to move forward, after a bomb blast or a heavy rainfall, and never stop.

"Mumbai is the original big city... While the budget has allocated a sufficient amount to the creation of smart cities across the country, Mumbai needs more funds to improve its transport and housing infrastructure."

Sugata Bose of Trinamool Congress, grand-nephew of Subhas Chandra Bose and a Harvard University historian, mocked finance minister Arun Jaitley's budget speech, citing the 18th century famous English litterateur Samuel Johnson, saying what was good in the budget was not new and what was new was not good.

Bose used his history repertoire while advising the finance minister on safeguarding the interests of states while implementing the much awaited goods and services (GST) tax. He quoted Madan Mohan Malviya's speech in the central legislative assembly in 1908 where the Congress leader and founder of the Benaras Hindu University told the then British government in India that maximum tax revenues should be devolved to the provinces, and in his 1909 presidential address of the Lahore session of the Congress argued the case for the provinces to be semi-independent and enjoy the full powers of levying taxes.

He said that instead of setting up new institutions like the proposed Jai Prakash Narayan National Centre for Excellence in humanities and allocating Rs500 crore as the finance minister did, it would have been better if the money was allocated to a few colleges and universities that were already functioning.