In a joint statement, the party’s urban district president Rajwinder Kaur and rural district president Prem Kumar decried the budget as ‘anti-people’. The AAP leaders said the local industry had had their high hopes of the budget dashed. The government instead turned a blind eye to small scale industries. They said the local leather industry would suffer, and the leather and sports goods manufacturing industries would not get any relief. The feeling is it will be nothing but a burden to the industry which is already facing a severe crisis during the pandemic. The AAP leaders said the footwear industry was 90% dependent on imports for leather and the Budget had imposed 10% duty on wet blue leather, adding that earlier there was no import duty on wet blue leather. According to them, the import duty will wipe out the leather industry, endangering the jobs of employees.
