Will Arun Jaitley do in 2018 what his colleague Jaswant Singh did in 2004?

NEW DELHI: Will Arun Jaitley do in 2018 what his BJP party colleague Jaswant Singh did in 2004?
That is the question uppermost on everyone's minds.
Why?
Because the country is at the cusp of a spate of Assembly elections, this year, and the mother of all elections, the Lok Sabha polls, scheduled for next year. That makes today's budget by finance minister Arun Jaitley his last one before national elections.
Will that make Jaitley present a crowd-pleaser of a budget or will he focus on fiscal discipline and prudence - to spur stalling growth - win the day?
Union Budget 2018: Live updates
Let's take a look at what earlier finance minister Jaswant Singh did when faced with the same situation:
February 2004: The NDA is in power at the Centre.The Lok Sabha polls are coming up in April-May. Atal Bihari Vajpayee is PM. His finance minister is Jaswant Singh. Here's what he does:
* Extends Antodaya Anna Yojana to crore families from 1.5 crore. The Yojana was a Scheme to provide highly subsidised food to millions of the poorest families.
* He extends the exemption on long-term capital gains tax on listed stocks
* Singh halves stamp duty
* He eases restrictions on farmers taking loans, so they didn't have to mortgage their entire land as a guarantee. He rationalised the amount of and to be mortgaged and made it proportional to the amount of loans taken.
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