New Delhi: INDIA bloc parties on Tuesday decided that they will protest in Parliament and outside over “discrimination” against the opposition-ruled states in the Union Budget.

Kharge, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, Congress’ deputy leader in Rajya Sabha Pramod Tiwari, Congress’ deputy leader in Lok Sabha Gaurav Gogoi, NCP (SCP) chief Sharad Pawar, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut, TMC leaders Derek O’Brien and Kalyan Banerjee, DMK’s T R Baalu, JMM’s Mahua Maji, AAP’s Raghav Chadha and Sanjay Singh, and CPI(M)’s John Brittas, among others, attended the meeting.

Congress general secretaries K C Venugopal and Jairam Ramesh were also present in the meeting.

“The concept of a budget has already been destroyed by this year’s Union Budget. They have completely discriminated against most of the states. So general sentiment of the INDIA bloc meeting was we have to protest against this,” Venugopal told reporters after the meeting.

Later, in a post on X, Venugopal said, “The Union Budget presented today was extremely discriminatory and dangerous, which completely goes against the principles of federalism and fairness that the Union Government must follow.”