Khaas aadmi

The visitors’ gallery in the Lok Sabha was half empty since few representatives of the aam aadmi turned up to hear the finance minister’s presentation of the Interim Budget. The Rajya Sabha gallery, reserved for MPs of the Upper House was packed. While industrialists like Rahul Bajaj and Rajeev Chandrasekhar took their seats even before the Budget speech began, they were later joined by Bimal Jalan who was chief economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee when he presented his first budget in 1982. Others in the gallery were media tycoon Shobhana Bhartia, D Raja, Jayanthi Natarajan and Rajiv Shukla.