Abstract
This is the last year before elections. Undoubtedly, Finance Minister is under severe pressure from his colleagues to present a budget so that they can go to their constituents with something positive to say to the voters. Past experience have shown that populist budget has not helped the ruling parties The case in point is the budget passed by Jaswant Singh before the elections which was highly populist but still NDA lost the elections. Although successive Finance Ministers know this fact very well but pressure from the party members is hard to ignore. Capital Market seems to have taken these populist measures into account even before the budget is presented and as a result stock index increases a week before budget and then crash.
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