Budget frontlines: 'Agnipath' driving shift in spending patterns

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, a former defence minister until five years ago, allocated to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on Tuesday, earmarking a Budget of Rs 6.21 lakh crore – almost the same amount in her Interim Budget, presented before the General Elections this year.

The government says that going by the baseline of the Budget for FY24, the current allocation amounts to a 4.72 per cent rise over the previous year’s allocation.

As a percentage of government expenditure, Sitharaman has allocated just 13 per cent to defence, continuing a multi-year trend of falling allocations. As a